
ALBION W. TOURGEE 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 



BY 

ROY F. DIBBLE 



Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Require- 
ments for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in 
the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University 



NEW YORK 

LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
192 i 



Copyright, 1921, by 
lemcke & buechner 






Gift 

^ 10 «*V 



TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER 



PREFACE 

In this book I have attempted to weave into a single 
narrative the various threads of interest in the life of 
Tourgee, soldier, carpet-bagger, politician, judge, con- 
sul, lecturer, editor and publisher, political writer, and 
novelist. The idea of writing his biography would 
quite certainly never have occurred to me had I not 
spent my early years in a cherished rural community, 
hardly centralized enough to be dignified even by the 
name of hamlet, only four miles from Thorheim. 
One of my earliest recollections is of hearing my 
father say what sounded to me then like a single word, 
"Judgetorjay," which very much aroused my childish 
curiosity. And while engaged in the work of collect- 
ing material and of writing, I have often been cheered 
by the thought that the published results of my re- 
searches might afford some pleasure to many friends 
and acquaintances of mine, who knew Tourgee not so 
much as a prominent novelist as a genially democratic 
neighbor. I can only hope that the picture of him 
which I have drawn (in which task I have been 
prompted only by the love of impartial, but I trust not 
unsympathetic, truth) will not cause any of his friends 
to hold in less esteem the only literary person of im- 
portance who has added the lustre of legendary charm 
to a spot already graciously favored by nature, but 
will rather enable them to have a juster comprehension 
of the reasons for their admiration. 



PREFACE 

Both the demand of prefatory conciseness and the 
impossibility of expressing in an adequate manner the 
gratitude I feel toward many persons whose kindly in- 
terest has been shown me in multitudinous ways, some- 
what disconcert me at this time. To Mrs. Elizabeth 
S. Warner, now mistress of Thorheim, who placed all 
of Tourgee's private correspondence, together with 
masses of unpublished material, at my disposal, and 
also favored me with a wealth of anecdote and gener- 
ous hospitality, I owe the greatest debt of all. Profes- 
sor Carl Van Doren read my manuscript chapter by 
chapter as it was written and helped me with much 
penetrating criticism. My thanks are also due to Pro- 
fessors W. P. Trent, A. H. Thorndike and G. P. 
Krapp, who gave me the benefit of their ripened schol- 
arship. My colleague, Doctor R. F. Jones, read my 
manuscript with painstaking care. Professor Archi- 
bald Henderson, of the University of North Carolina, 
and Professor C. Alphonso Smith, of the United States 
Naval Academy, put me in touch with various sources 
of information. Several of Tourgee's classmates of 
Rochester University and a number of residents in 
Greensboro, North Carolina, furnished me with much 
illustrative material. The recent death of Mrs. Tour- 
gee prevents me from showing her my appreciation for 
the record of her husband's life which she kept for so 
many years — a record upon which she would have 
based her own biography of him, had not the memories 
of their past experiences aroused in her emotions so 
poignant that she was unable to put her plan into exe- 
cution. 

Roy F. Dibble. 

Columbia University, May, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Birth — Education — The War .... n 

II The South 3 2 

III "A Fool's Errand" . 59 

IV "Our Continent" . . 84 

V Thorheim 9 2 

VI Bordeaux 124 

VII Conclusion 13 2 

Bibliography 15° 

Index 155 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 

CHAPTER I 
BIRTH— EDUCATION— THE WAR 

"As far as the mere facts of my birth, residence, and 
occupation are concerned," says Tourgee in a letter 
dated August, 1894, to a college president who had 
written him asking for authentic biographical infor- 
mation, "they are, I suppose, easily accessible to any- 
one. Beyond that, I do not know that any account of 
my life or thoughts has ever been written. I have 
avoided with some persistence both biography and auto- 
biography. None except of my own household has 
ever come near enough to me for the former and I 
have small inclination for the latter." 

The above statement must be taken with the classic 
grain of salt, however ; for though it is in the main cor- 
rect* its author did begin an account of his life which, 
as he noted on the margin of the manuscript, was in- 
tended for use as the basis of a biography to be written 
by one of his closest friends. He also left several other 
autobiographical accounts of certain periods of his 
life, and from them many of the facts in this biography 
have been taken. 

11 



12 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

The Tourgee family, of Huguenot origin, left 
France in 1685, following the Revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes. After stopping for a brief period on the Is- 
land of Guernsey, its members decided to break the last 
chain that held them to the Old World, and accord- 
ingly settled in Kingston, Rhode Island, in the latter 
part of the seventeenth century. The first Tourgee 
whose name is left on record was Peter, who supported 
himself and family in this part of the New World by 
peg and awl. At some indefinite period in the early 
eighteenth century the family again moved, this time 
to Framingham, Massachusetts, and there the future 
author's grandfather, Valentine Tourgee, married Re- 
becka Robbins, whose family had come from New 
London, Connecticut, after experiencing the siege of 
that town by the traitor Benedict Arnold. To this 
couple was born Valentine Jr., father of Albion W. 
Tourgee, in 18 14. During his early manhood Valen- 
tine the second moved to Lee, Berkshire County, Mass- 
achusetts, and there met Louisa Emma Winegar, who 
was a descendant of Edward Doty, one of the famous 
colony that came over on the Mayflower. The Wine- 
gar family was of German origin, and the first one 
whose name is known, Ulric Winegar, born in Switzer- 
land in 1648, came to America in 1710 with the colony 
of Palatines which was under the fostering care of 
Queen Anne. Ulric settled in Ulster County, New 
York, and at some later date moved to Lee, where, as 
has been noted, Valentine Tourgee Jr. had likewise 
come. Jacob Winegar, maternal grandfather of Al- 
bion W. Tourgee, had a family of seven children ; one, 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 13 

Jack, was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, 
and another, Jacob Jr., was apparently a happy-go- 
lucky chap, which may account for the fact that his 
youthful nephew, Albion, came to him in the forties, 
for the comforts of home which his carping step- 
mother denied him. 

It was at Lee, Massachusetts, then, that the author's 
parents met. His father was here engaged in the 
manufacture of paper. In 1836 he married Louisa 
Emma Winegar, his brother Cyrus and one of Louisa's 
four sisters also marrying at the same time. Appar- 
ently the nomadic instincts which had characterized 
both families were inherited by these descendants, for 
both couples soon after the joint marriage removed to 
Williamsfield, Ashtabula County, Ohio, where Valen- 
tine and Louisa Tourgee settled on a farm. And here, 
on May 2, 1838, was born their first child, Albion 
Winegar Tourgee. Two other children were born to 
them, but both died in infancy. The author's mother, 
never strong, gradually wasted away and finally died 
of tuberculosis in February, 1843. All that he was 
ever able to recall of his mother was that she used to 
whip him gently because he "toed in," and that her 
funeral took place on a bleak winter's day. 

The bereaved husband and father bore this calamity 
bravely and for several years remained alone with his 
baby son. He finally decided to tempt fate, however, 
by procuring a foster mother for his child, and accord- 
ingly took a second spouse, Rowena Snow, some time 
between 1844 and 1846, to which union there was born 
a daughter about ten years Albion's junior. In 1847 



14 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

a final removal was made to a farm one and a half 
miles north of Kingsville, Ohio, and here the father, 
who had seen his son grow famous, died April 26, 
1889. Meanwhile fate, having been tempted, was 
proving capricious as usual, for the boy's legal mother 
was showing herself true to the well-fixed tradition of 
her species. 1 The result was that the high-spirited lad, 
who, by the time he was fourteen, was already begin- 
ning to show that uncompromising independence which 
later became one of the most pronounced characteris- 
tics of the grown man, decided to sever connections 
with his home and go for protection and solace to his 
uncle, Jacob Winegar Jr., in Lee, Massachusetts. How 
he obtained the funds for this youthful adventure is 
not known, but obtain them he did and stayed in his 
new home apparently for some two years. The facts 
about this period of his life are very meagre indeed, 
but probably he was pleased with the Rip Van Winkle 
propensities of his uncle; for in one of his autobio- 
graphical fragments Tourgee boasts that as a boy he 
could never be relied on to perform the farm chores 
which his father assigned him, but that he usually stole 
the paternal rifle and hied him to the woods to return 
just when he pleased. It is only fair to state, how- 
ever, that the chief element of interest in the prodigal's 

1 This characterization of Tourgee' s step-mother is based 
wholly upon his own statement about her. A lady who knew 
Rowena Snow Tourgee intimately has assured me, however, 
that she was in reality a "mild, even-tempered woman, who al- 
ways spoke very quietly." Tourgee probably magnified what- 
ever faults his step-mother may have had, in accordance with 
his usual practice of exaggerating the hardships of his career. 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 15 

return was an irate parent "armed with retributory 
cudgel." The use of the rod was of course firmly be- 
lieved in, because the lad's father was a very strict 
Methodist, whose enormously long supplications in the 
weekly prayer meetings could, according to tradition, 
be heard far beyond the walls of the church itself. 
The Methodistic element in the father's character also 
showed itself in his love of argument, which was in 
turn inherited by his son. Often the two would, in 
the midst of a tempestuous debate, seat themselves at 
the table, when, of course, it was necessary to pause 
briefly for the saying of grace; and once this per- 
functory task had been performed as speedily as pos- 
sible, the verbal combat would be renewed with greater 
violence than ever. 

But, though he loved rod and gun with all the fervor 
of youth, the boy loved books as well, and it was at the 
library in Lee that his first real opportunity for exten- 
sive reading came. His father had once intended to 
prepare for a profession and had bought many books 
with this end in view. But financial loss, and more 
particularly a strong religious awakening, had turned 
his mind from such worldly pursuits as the mastering 
of professions, and also the making of verse, in which 
he had occasionally indulged ; hence it was that re- 
ligious zeal prompted him to commit to the flames such 
impious performances as Scott's novels and other 
works of a like nature. The following volumes had 
been preserved, however, for their indubitable moral 
qualities, and had been read by Albion in lieu of more 
exciting material: the Bible, Goodrich's "Universal 



16 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

History/' a "History of the United States," "Pil- 
grim's Progress," Bacon's "Essays," "Paradise Lost," 
"Night Thoughts," D'Aubigne's "History of the Ref- 
ormation," other historical works, a book of fables, 
the ubiquitous "Scottish Chiefs," and some volumes of 
religious biography. The boy was compelled to mem- 
orize parts of "Paradise Lost," "Night Thoughts," 
and the Bible for his soul's good and incidentally as a 
punishment for childish offences. He liked the Gospel 
of St. John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revela- 
tions especially well, and once said that he could have 
restored all three of these had all copies been lost; but 
it may justly be surmised that he was here emulating a 
commonly known statement of Macaulay, rather than 
telling the facts of the case. This, then, had consti- 
tuted his intellectual pabulum till the good New Eng-> 
land library opened his eyes to a much more extensive 
literary field; and from this time till the call to arms 
came, he literally reveled in English literature, while it 
is significant that he was particularly interested in his- 
tory and the background of fiction — the life and so- 
ciety of the times portrayed. 

At some indefinite period, probably in 1854, he re- 
turned to his father's farm; for, being now nearly 
full-grown, he had little cause to fear the weight of his 
father's arm and still less his step-mother's tongue. 
He was somewhat undersized for his age at this time, 
but very tough and wiry. Here he remained, alter- 
nately teaching in some elementary school and study- 
ing at Kingsville Academy, whither he daily trudged 
from the home farm until he entered the University of 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 17 

Rochester in 1859. This academy had as its principal 
Chester W. Heywood, a young man fresh from col- 
lege, to whom Tourgee became warmly attached and 
to whom he always gave precedence later when speak- 
ing of the formative influences of his early life. Hey- 
wood freely opened his quite extensive library to the 
boy, and thus further literary treasures were revealed 
to him. Particularly, at this time, he read the Waver- 
ley novels, taking one home every other day till he had 
finished the set. Meanwhile, "Al," as he was familiarly 
called, was rapidly winning first place as a scholar, de- 
spite the fact that the standard of attainment at the 
academy was high, since attendance was voluntary and 
most of the students were paying their own way. He 
was regarded by his fellow students as destined for a 
brilliant career because of his general scholastic ability, 
especially in languages. It was at this time that he 
formed the determination to follow the legal profes- 
sion. 

During his academy days, the future novelist had 
already begun to exercise his 'prentice pen in a very 
'prentice manner indeed. A manuscript book of his, 
dated March, 1857, and entitled "Sense and Non- 
sense," contains these first endeavors, and it is per- 
haps no more than charitable to remark that the non- 
sense is far more in evidence that any glimmerings of 
sense. There are about forty "poems," some based 
upon classical subjects and written in a very weak 
Byronic style; in fact, two are addressed to that 
poet so often imitated by aspiring youths. Apparently 
some of these verses sought immortality by being 



18 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

printed in the academy paper. But by far the larger 
part of these rhymed lines bear the title To Emma, 
and since she will appear very frequently in the pages 
that follow, it may be well to know something about 
her now. 

The young lady thus poetically eulogized was Emma 
Lodoiska Kilbourne, the daughter of Harmon and 
Mary Corwin Kilbourne, and she was likewise a stu- 
dent at Kingsville Academy. Both the Kilbourne and 
Corwin families were descended from Yorkshire gen- 
try, and had come to New England before 1635. Some 
of their descendants had intermarried with the Win- 
throps of Massachusetts, and as a result Emma Kil- 
bourne was a lineal descendant of both governors of 
that name. The Kilbournes settled in Bristol, Ver- 
mont; and after the Revolutionary War, since they 
were suspected of being too fond of the Tories to be 
comfortable in New England, they emigrated to Can- 
ada, whence at some later time they removed to Con- 
neaut, Ohio. At this place it was that Emma lived, 
and whence she was sent to the academy. It was a 
case of love at first sight, on Tourgee's part at least; 
for when he first saw her, he confidentially remarked to 
a friend, "I'm going to marry that girl," and after an 
engagement of five years he did so. The remark he 
made to her on his death bed, "Emma, you have been 
the one perfect wife," was but little exaggerated, as 
succeeding events will show. 

After ending his academy days, Tourgee probably 
taught school a little while, and then, from the autumn 
of 1859 t^l January, 1861, he was a student at the Uni- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 19 

versity of Rochester. Just before entering this insti- 
tution, he made another trip to Lee, Massachusetts, to 
receive his share of his grandfather's property; the 
amount of his share is unknown, but it certainly was 
not large, for he paid his own way through college. 
Had he chosen to do so, he might have had his college 
expenses paid by another ; for during his boyhood stay 
in Lee, a gentleman there had been so impressed by 
Tourgee's youthful promise that he later offered to 
send him to Williams College. But, independent as 
usual, Tourgee refused this kind offer and went to 
Rochester, where he received* sophomore rating, 
doubtless because of his good record at the academy. 

Here he made no special effort to attain high scholas- 
tic standing, but largely followed his own sweet will. 
His course was very erratic; what he read, he read' 
with all his might, but in the subjects that interested 
him least, he did just enough work to maintain his 
standing in class. He read poetry enormously, but 
mathematics was his special aversion. One day his 
mathematics teacher reprimanded him for a poor reci- 
tation, whereupon with tears in his eyes he blurted out : 
"Professor ! I like you personally better than any man 
on the faculty, but I don't like mathematics and I won't 
study them if I have to leave college." He read all of 
Shakspere and, if we can believe his word, all the 
pre-Shaksperean dramatists, to see how great their 
influence on the master dramatist had been. He had 
a habit of marking the books in the college library with 
his own pen, but this peccadillo was not discovered un- 
til he had become so famous that the books thus marked 



/ 



20 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

gained added value in the eyes of the college authorities 
by reason of these disfigurements. He was fond of 
debating in his college days, and has left in manu- 
script some specimens of his speeches, which are 
couched in the usual terms of forensic finality that one 
ordinarily finds in the philippics of a budding orator. 
A manuscript book containing notes on a college course 
in logic has also about a dozen more poems, several of 
them having war as their theme, which uniformly 
maintain the high standard of inferiority that had 
characterized those written in his academy days. This 
same manuscript book contains also some fragments of 
short stories. More significant than any of these in- 
terests were his friendships with the students, and par- 
ticularly with President M. B. Anderson, who was 
Tourgee's life-long friend and counselor. 

As soon as the first mutterings of the fast approach- 
ing war were heard, Tourgee began to show that love 
of leadership which was always one of his strong 
traits by organizing a number of students and drilling 
them. He amply proved his mastery one day, when 
one of the members of his "company," a close friend 
of his, did something which displeased him. In a very 
short space of time, the friend was on the ground with 
the self-appointed officer on top, pummelling him un- 
mercifully. Apparently his funds were running low 
at this time, for in January, 1861, he left the University 
and became associate principal of a school at Wilson, 
Niagara County, New York. He doubtless intended 
to return to his collegiate work at some future time, 
but it was not to be. The degree of A.B. was granted 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 21 

to him by the University in June, 1862, however, in 
accordance with the common practice of awarding de- 
grees to students who had entered the service of their 
country before their academic careers were quite com- 
pleted. Years later, in 1880 to be exact, Rochester 
University awarded him the honorary degree of LL.D., 
and three years later the University of Copenhagen 
made him a Doctor of Philosophy. Tourgee remained 
at the school in Wilson until the nineteenth of April, 
1 86 1, on which date he enlisted in the 27th New York 
Volunteers. 

He had not long to wait before suffering for the 
cause of the Union. In the first Battle of Bull Run, on 
July 4, 1 86 1, he lost the sight of his left eye 1 and also 
received a bad wound in his spine. The eye was later 
removed and a glass one put in its place, which so 
closely resembled the natural one that many people 
who knew him fairly well never suspected that his left 
eye was artificial. But the wound to the spine was a 
different matter. During the whole of his life he never 
fully recovered from it, for it caused a permanent 
nervousness and often excruciating pain ; consequently, 
he never saw a really well day after that eventful 
fourth of July. 

1 Tourgee stated again and again in his writings that his left 
eye was lost in this battle; but some of his intimate friends, 
whose word is unimpeachable, have assured me that in reality 
he had already lost the sight of this eye by an accident in his 
boyhood. It seems plain that in this case, as in several others, 
Tourgee was so enthralled by his ultra-romantic theory of life, 
which colored all he did and wrote, that he applied it to one 
of the rather drab facts of his actual career. 



22 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

For three days after this tragic event Tourgee was 
in a state of coma, and when he returned to conscious- 
ness it was to find himself in Washington with a nurse 
at his side. The roar of battle was still in his ears, 
and for several weeks he lived over, in his dilirium, 
the ghastly events of that momentous day. The sur- 
geon in attendance looked for nothing for him save a 
slow lingering until death should mercifully come. 
But instead he began gradually to mend, though it 
was eleven months before he could walk without the 
aid of crutches. By August, 1861, he had recovered 
sufficient vitality to become somewhat entranced by a 
Washington belle, a guest at the house where he was 
invalided; but as soon as he saw Miss Kilbourne once 
more, to whom he had been engaged for three years, 
his old love returned stronger than ever. In this 
month, having received his honorable discharge from 
the army, he was sent to Ashtabula, Ohio, lying on the 
floor of the train that carried him, for his back was too 
weak to permit his sitting up. Having arrived at Ash- 
tabula, he lay on his couch and read Blackstone every 
day, until, by January, 1862, he was able to hobble on 
crutches down to the law office of Sherman & Farmer, 
Ashtabula, where he studied law till the following July. 

But what of his literary work during this period? 
The answer is that it saw the publication of his first 
book, and the circumstances of this event are of suffi- 
cient interest to warrant narration. Before this story 
is told, however, it should be noted that, when Tourgee 
started for war, he had in his knapsack two volumes, a 
Greek Testament and Cicero's "De Natura Deorum." 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 23 

The Testament was included not because of any partic- 
ular religious motive, but simply because he wished to 
continue the study of Greek. But he took the other 
book because he really liked to read it (he always ex- 
celled in Latin), having already read it more than 
once. During his army life he read both these books 
several times, and the Testament was especially wel- 
come to his closest friend in the army, a theological 
student. Tourgee also read during his first army ex- 
perience parts of the "Comedie Humaine" in the or- 
iginal. 

At the time when he began as a cripple to study law, 
Tourgee had already written a few stories which had 
appeared in some cheap periodicals long since gone into 
the limbo of oblivion, and he had even received a little 
pay for some of them; but so far he had no thought of 
literature as a serious occupation. Now, however, with 
the prospect of being a permanent invalid, possibly 
always confined to a couch, the thought of writing 
came to him, and he was materially assisted in this 
direction by the advice of President Anderson of 
Rochester and of the Professor of Greek in that in- 
stitution. Acting upon their advice, he made the 
synopsis and indeed wrote several chapters of a novel; 
but he finally decided instead to publish a volume of 
poems, most of which had already been written. One 
more, however, he was prompted to write, and it is 
worthy of remark that it was concerned with the con- 
ditions attending the outbreak of the Civil War. At 
this lengthy poem he labored until its completion in 
January, 1862. Then, as soon as he was able, he 



24 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

journeyed to a neighboring city to seek a publisher. 
He found one who was willing to execute his wishes, 
provided that he would assume the cost of the job. 
Tourgee assented, thinking that he could pay for it 
with the money from the pension that had just been 
granted him, a pension which he renounced upon 
patriotic motives when he re-entered the service. But 
the book, published under an assumed name, cost all 
the pension money and a little more. When he received 
the first two copies sent him by the publisher, he was 
so disappointed at the immaturity which, hidden in 
the hypnotizing manuscript, the printed pages revealed, 
that he thrust them with small delay into the kitchen 
stove. This incineration was also determined upon 
partly because of the advice of his father, to whom 
he had shown the volumes in hope of winning some 
paternal praise. Late in the summer of 1862, he went 
to the publisher for a report and found that of the 
one hundred copies printed twenty had been sold. He 
had not at any time really expected that the sale of 
the book would entirely pay for the expenses of pub- 
lication; but by this time no illusion whatever, either 
literary or financial, remained; and accordingly he 
sought and obtained permission from the publisher to 
cut the unsold copies into bits, which he did, not, how- 
ever, without some pangs of regret. Nevertheless, he 
had now tasted both the sweets and pains of author- 
ship ; and, while it was easy to destroy this first product 
of his enthusiasm for literature, the enthusiasm itself 
remained, dormant for some years, to be sure, by rea- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 25 

son of war, bad health, and the necessity of earning a 
living, but still it remained. 

Meanwhile sterner events were again claiming 
Tourgee's active interest. During the spring of 1862, 
he took a preparation containing strychnia and there- 
upon began to recover the use of his limbs. While 
still an invalid, he attended meetings for the recruit- 
ing of volunteers and even spoke for their cause, seated 
in a chair. By July he was again well enough to serve 
his country, and accordingly went to Columbus and 
got a commission as first lieutenant in Company G of 
the 105th Ohio Volunteers, many of whose members 
were his old academy schoolmates. Over thirty years 
later, in "The Story of a Thousand," he performed a 
labor of love by giving a minute account of this com- 
pany. Unfortunately for his biographer, he, as the 
preface states, "endeavored to restrict personal incident 
almost entirely to< illustrative events common to the 
experience of all" ; hence it was that he did not describe 
his own experiences in prison because they were too 
personal "to be compatible with the general tone of 
the work." From July till October the company was 
engaged in minor war activities in Kentucky. At the 
Battle of Perry ville, October 8, 1862, however, it lost 
about one-third of its total strength, and Tourgee again 
suffered an injury to his spine which kept him in a 
hospital at Danville, Kentucky, through October and 
November. He rejoined his company about the first 
of December and for the next month spent his time in 
helping to chase the raider Morgan. 

It was during this time that an event of special 



26 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

interest occurred, best told in Tourgee's own words. 
"I remember that as late as September 1862, I was 
myself put under arrest in the army of the United 
States, for refusing to surrender a colored man who 
had saved my company." 1 This brief utterance, con- 
cerning a fact of which nothing else is known, is the 
first evidence of that consuming passion which later 
influenced nearly everything Tourgee did and wrote — 
an untiring sympathy, admiration, even love, for the 
negro in his servile state, and a zeal which was never 
quenched for obtaining justice (at least Tourgee's con- 
ception of justice) for the black man. 

At some time in January, 1863, another event took 
place of which little but the bare statement of fact is 
known. On one of the Morgan expeditions referred 
to, Tourgee was captured at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 
and spent the following four months in prison. He has 
left little record of this decidedly unpleasant episode 
in his life, but it is certain that, in what order is un- 
known, the several walls of the prisons at Atlanta, 
Milan, Salisbury, and those of the notorious Libby, 
encased him. He later referred to this experience as 
follows: "Despite the temptation, he [Tourgee] has 
rarely alluded to the fact that he was a guest of 'Libby' 
and sundry other hotels of that type — only more so — 
at the South, in public speech or writing. ... Of 
the treatment they received, the lack of supplies, the 
crowded condition of the prisons, the lack of shelter, 
the inexpressible foulness of some of them, and the 
1 The Chautauquan, Nov. 1881, p. 93. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 27 

indifference manifested toward their feelings, he has 
said nothing lest his purpose should be misconceived." 1 
Decidedly uncomfortable as these experiences were, 
their irksome monotony must have been slightly 
mitigated by at least three changes of air and 
"scenery." In later years he once remarked to a friend, 
apropos of this experience: "I ran away once or 
twice and was shot at, caught and penned up again. 
Oh, I had quite a variety." He put some part of his 
life in prison to good account by the study of Spanish 
and the attendant reading of Cervantes' s immortal tale 
in the original, together with Carlyle's "French 
Revolution," which was "one of the few books that 
found their way into the room in Libby Prison of 
which the Bystander was at one time joint-tenant with 
many others." 2 But in the first part of May, 1863, 
he was exchanged from prison, and so freed from 
one of the most disagreeable misfortunes that can 
happen to a soldier. 

That he wasted little time in returning home and 
becoming partner in an event which he and another 
person had longingly anticipated for five years, is 
sufficiently evinced by the following passage taken 
from his war diary, which covers the period from May 
till November, 1863, and which has fortunately been 
preserved : "May 14, 1863. Married at Columbus, 
Ohio, by the Rev. Julius E. Gardner at the Med. Coll. 
buildings. Returned to our lodgings in the W. S. Hotel 

1 "A Bystander's Notes," in The Chicago Inter Ocean, Feb. 13, 
1890. 

2 Ibid., June 26, 1891. 



28 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

to take life quietly and happily. It ought to be happy, 
for it is the consummation of five years of pleasant 
waiting and sweet expectation." But unfortunately 
the quiet and happy life was not destined to last long 
at that particular time, for the diary on May 25 con- 
tains this terse sentence : "To-day I left for the war 
again." 

Practically the only source of information about 
Tourgee's life during the remainder of this year is 
this same war diary, together with some passages in 
"The Story of a Thousand." There is little, of worth 
in this much battered diary except as it contains 
biographical information, for its contents are merely 
typical of most personal records of this kind. It is 
filled with grumblings at army life and its privations 
on the one hand, and fervidly patriotic sentiments on 
the other, complaints of the scarcity of letters, and 
particularly many devout expressions of love for his 
wife and supplications to the Almighty that he may 
be spared to return to her in safety. Much of it was 
written in the blackness of night as its sprawling, at 
times illegible, lines show, not a little during pauses 
between battles, and some even while he was directly 
under fire. The following passage is characteristic: 
"July 5. We got a mail today but nothing for me. 
Well no wonder for Emma has gone on a spree and 
cannot stop to write to me. I do hope the darling is 
happy." 

"The Story of a Thousand" gives a much clearer 
idea of the army activities in which Tourgee took part 
during this time than does the diary. From this his- 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 29 

tory it is apparent that the 105th Ohio Volunteers was 
engaged in several battles. During the latter part of 
June, this regiment was among those which saw action 
in the campaign against the Confederate position at 
Tullahoma, which was taken July 1. It also assisted 
in the Battle of Chickamauga and in the campaign 
against Chattanooga. Moreover, it saw service in the 
victorious battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
Ridge. Its subsequent participation in the march 
"from Atlanta to the sea" was not, however, shared by 
Tourgee, as will shortly appear.' 

It has been noted that Tourgee had already been 
under arrest in 1862, and his second experience of the 
kind came in June, 1863. The diary states that during 
this month he was in prison two weeks because, while 
on picket duty, he had pricked with his sword a soldier 
who had tried to get through the lines, and was ac- 
cordingly accused of wounding him. After being in- 
carcerated two weeks, Tourgee was released from 
prison, but the charge against him was not finally dis- 
posed of until several weeks later. He was sentenced 
to be formally reprimanded by his superior officer ; but 
that the reprimand was only a form is evident from 
the language in which, according to the diary, it was 
couched : "Lieutenant Tourgee, I have nothing to say. 
You will report for duty tomorrow morning." 

To take commands from another was the one thing 
that galled Tourgee perhaps more than anything else. 
On June 2 he tendered his resignation as first lieutenant 
because his "rights were not respected and his reputa- 
tion threatened," but it was not accepted. It was doubt- 



30 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

less this independence of spirit, combined with his 
interest in the negro which had already manifested 
itself, that led him during the following summer to 
meditate withdrawal from his regiment and the for- 
mation of a negro company, to be officered of course 
by himself. And it was probably because of this same 
independence, together with the fact that his old 
wound (which had already troubled him much of the 
time) was aggravated when he leapt a ditch in October, 
that he applied for leave of absence. This he ap- 
parently obtained about the tenth of November, for 
his diary closes on that date, while he was waiting for 
his leave of absence and feeling very wretched on ac- 
count of his wound. In December he again tendered 
his resignation because of insolence (at least he called 
it such) on the part of his superiors, which was once 
more not accepted. Whether it was finally accepted 
because of this friction or because of his state of 
health is not definitely known; at any rate, on about 
January i, 1864, he withdrew from the army. The 
fact probably is that what Tourgee deemed to be in- 
dependence was regarded as pig-headedness by his 
superior officers, and probability strongly favors their 
opinion. 

Upon thus severing his connection with the army, 
Tourgee without doubt at once went home, though 
the next five months are a blank as far as definite facts 
are concerned. At all events, on May 2, 1864, the 
anniversary of his birth in a month which he always 
regarded as peculiarly lucky for him, he was admitted 
to the bar at Painsville, Ohio, and at once entered the 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 31 

law office of the firm with which he had previously 
studied, Sherman & Farmer. On July 2, licenses to 
practise law and to act as Claim Agent were granted 
him at Ashtabula, Ohio. Here there is another gap 
in biographic facts and a jump of eight months must 
be made, during which time he was doubtless in- 
creasing his knowledge of law, acquiring some financial 
rewards, and enjoying marital felicity. The jump just 
referred to ends in March, 1865, when for some rea- 
son he became a teacher in Erie Academy, Erie, Penn- 
sylvania, where he remained till the end of the school 
year. He also did some writing for The Erie Dispatch 
during this time. It is also possible that, at some time 
during the spring or early summer of this year, he 
sought and obtained the rank of major of a colored 
regiment, and that he was on his way to resume his 
war activities when the end of the struggle made any 
future military career for him impossible. Certainly 
there is every reason to believe that such a command 
would have been very acceptable to him, had his health 
been good enough to make such an honor possible, al- 
though this is very doubtful. 

For the time was now nearly at hand when, prin- 
cipally on account of his health, Tourgee was to take 
the step which proved to be far more important in its 
consequences than all the events of his life thus far 
put together. In fact, had he not embarked on this 
enterprise, it is very doubtful if any but his immediate 
friends would ever have remembered his name, or 
any account of his life been thought of sufficient value 
and interest to be recorded. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SOUTH 

In July, 1865, Tourgee went South alone to seek a 
new home for himself and his wife. His precarious 
health was, as already stated, the chief motive for this 
venture, for his spinal wound, the general hardship of 
life in the army, together with a weakness of the lungs 
which was probably inherited from his mother, had 
all combined to make him anything but robust at this 
time. For several weeks he was engaged as counsel in 
a court martial then being held at Raleigh, North 
Carolina, and for the next few weeks he made an ex- 
tensive tour through that state and Georgia also to 
seek a permanent residence near the Atlantic seacoast. 
Greensboro, North Carolina, was the locality finally 
selected, partly because he liked the place as well as 
any he had seen, and also because he was there able 
to rent the West Green Nurseries from C. P. Menden- 
hall — for he had decided to engage in the nursery busi- 
ness as well as in his regular profession. Having thus 
brought to a successful conclusion his search for a 
home better adapted to his state of health, he returned 
to Ohio in the latter part of August. The next few 
weeks were spent in settling his business affairs, and 

32 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 33 

the fourteenth of October found him and his wife in 
Greensboro with a capital of $5000 acquired through 
his legal activities. 

And so, from being a respected citizen of the North, 
in whose recent victoriously concluded cause he was an 
honored veteran, Tourgee became not a citizen but a 
"carpet-bagger" in the denuded, poverty-stricken 
South, whose wounds were still unstanched, whose 
efficient white male population was almost wiped out, 
whose territory was teeming with recently liberated, 
hence inexpressibly despised, negroes, and whose proud 
spirit, smarting with the sense of intolerable defeat, 
regarded almost everything Northern with fearful 
hatred. 

It is not the purpose of this biography to discuss in 
detail the Reconstruction Period, for that has already 
been done for the South as a whole 1 and for the part 
in which Tourgee lived in particular. 2 The interest 
in this discussion lies in the special part played by him 
in this movement, and the indelible results of this 
experience which showed themselves in his character 
and in his writings. 

Picture the situation. To this land, a land cursed 
by war, pestilence and famine, came this youthful, 

1 "History of the United States," by James Ford Rhodes, The 
Macmillan Co., New York, 1906, Vols. 6 and 7. Also "The 
American Nation : A History ;" General Editor A. B. Hart ; Vol. 
23, "Reconstruction Political and Social, 1865-1877," by W. A. 
Dunning, Harper & Brothers, 1907. 

8 Columbia University Dissertation, "Reconstruction in North 
Carolina," by J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Edwards & Broughton, 
Raleigh, N. C, 1906. 



34 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

impetuous, headstrong lawyer who believed in himself 
and the cause of the North absolutely without reserve, 
and who did not, at least in his early years, know the 
meaning of the words prudence and restraint. This 
being true, there could be but one result : enemies on 
every hand, both of reputation and life itself, oppro- 
brium, and what amounted practically to social 
ostracism, save for the friendship of the negroes, the 
handful of carpet-baggers, and a comparatively few 
Southerners, mostly Republicans, whose sympathies 
were not wholly with their native land. This, then, is 
in general what Tourgee experienced during the next 
fourteen years; a detailed account of the specific oc- 
currences in his life during this period follows. 

As has been noted, Tourgee began his life here by 
engaging in the nursery business. After a few months 
of conducting the enterprise alone, during which time 
he also practised law, he decided that an increase of 
capital as well as other tangible assistance was ad- 
visable. There is still extant a contract dated March 
1 6, 1866, which reveals that at that time a firm was 
organized by Tourgee, Seneca Kuhn of Greensboro* 
and R. L. Pettingill, formerly of Rochester, with a 
joint capital of $4500 in three equal shares, to be 
known as the Tourgee, Kuhn & Pettingill Firm, for 
the purpose of conducting the nursery business. Prob- 
ably this same triumvirate also practised law together 
under the name of A. W. Tourgee & Co., although it 
is not certain that Pettingill was a partner. But the 
bonds apparently thus firmly forged were soon broken, 
for Pettingill withdrew from the nursery firm in the 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 35 

following summer, and Kuhn followed suit on De- 
cember 6, 1866. Soon after this, Tourgee and Kuhn 
also dissolved the ties of legal partnership. The exact 
reasons for these dissolutions are not definitely known, 
though Tourgee later referred to Kuhn as a "rascal," 
apparently because he appropriated certain funds to 
himself ; but this being a favorite derogatory epithet of 
Tourgee' s, it is perhaps best to state the mere facts and 
not attempt to draw conclusions. At all events, there 
is a sudden cessation at this time of any further in- 
formation about the nursery business, whereas there is 
abundance of evidence that ere long Tourgee was hard 
pressed for money; and by June, 1867, the nursery 
venture had found an early grave, while Tourgee was 
left several thousand dollars in debt. 

During the year 1866 he had already begun that 
fearless and imprudent course of unceasing criticism 
of all things Southern that marked his whole subse- 
quent career. He was a delegate to the Loyalist Con- 
vention held at Philadelphia in September, which 
"was designed to bring about a demonstration by the 
thick-and-thin opponents of secession and Confeder- 
acy, who, through the operation of Johnson's policy, 
had been overwhelmed in their respective states by the 
popular ex-Confederates." x At this convention he 
delivered a speech in which he bitterly assailed the 
South for its treatment of the negro. This, together 
with other utterances of a similar unqualified nature, 
led to his receiving the first of a series of anonymous 

1 "Reconstruction Political and Social," by W. A. Dunning, 
P. 77- 



36 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

letters, which from that time on were showered upon 
him during his stay in the South. Several of these 
made the customary threat of giving him a coat of tar 
and feathers if his "lying tung," as one epistle put it, 
was not stopped. Some of them were, however, 
friendly letters warning him for the sake of personal 
safety to be discreet or else leave the South. But 
threats or words of friendly counsel equally failed to 
move him, though in the following year he took the 
wise precaution of requesting and obtaining permis- 
sion to carry firearms for personal protection. 

Meanwhile, undaunted by disrupted partnerships 
and the imminent failure of his nursery, the irrepres- 
sible Tourgee, whose faith in all sorts of financial will- 
o-the-wisps seemed to grow stronger every time it was 
knocked topsy-turvy, was already forming a new 
enterprise even before the final failure of his first busi- 
ness experience. He had probably been engaged in 
the real estate business in 1866, possibly again with a 
partner; at any rate, the statement that the first half 
of the year 1867 saw him embarked on his first 
journalistic venture fortunately needs no qualification. 
On January 3, 1867, there appeared the first edition 
of The Union Register, published by the Union Pub- 
lishing Company at Greensboro. This was a weekly 
newspaper containing four very large pages of seven 
columns each, which sold for three dollars per year. 
While Tourgee's name does not appear directly in 
print as editor of this paper, its editor he unquestion- 
ably was; and the following utterance, taken from the 
editorial of the first number and explaining the func- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 37 

tion of the paper, is with little doubt his own pro- 
nouncement: "We are aware that the advocacy of 
Union principles; or, if you prefer the word, radical 
principles, is anything but a popular movement in any 
part of the South. It is what we have enlisted for, 
however. . . . Let us . . . give our strength to loose it 
[the South] from the slough of ignorance and 
prejudice." This same editorial also speaks of the 
"poor, misguided and mismanaged South." An edi- 
torial on January 25 also gives the unnecessary in- 
formation that "the Register hopes never to be a 'mild' 
advocate of anything" ; for if Tourgee ever reiterated 
his entire lack of lukewarmness once, he did it a thou- 
sand times. It would seem that the statement of the 
first editorial to the effect that the advocacy of Union 
principles was anything but a popular Southern move- 
ment had amply proved itself by the following June, 
for an editorial on the fourteenth of that month states 
that the "present number of the Register is the last 
which will be published in its present locality. . . . Six 
months ago, under every possible form of discourage- 
ment, the Register sprang into life, the unfaltering 
champion of true and absolute Republicanism. . . . The 
hundreds of North Carolinians who are patrons of the 
Register may be regarded as the forlorn hope of true 
Republicanism in the state." Other editorials had 
advocated the principles which Tourgee fought for in 
the convention the following year. The paper was 
transferred to Raleigh under different management, 
to which place it is probable that the "forlorn hope" 
sent many letters of inquiry as to the fate of the three 



38 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

dollars which had been invested by many Republicans 
in a year's subscription. Thus ended in failure an- 
other of Tourgee's attempts to succeed in an under- 
taking which required the "head for business" he did 
not have. That it was a failure, though partly be- 
cause of extraneous reasons, is sufficiently attested in 
his own words, in a letter dated April 2, 1868: "I 
started one newspaper here at Greensboro — the 
Register — and it ran on until, by exterior mishaps, I 
lost all I had brought here." This is probably a refer- 
ence to the nursery fiasco ; at any rate, the newspaper 
was not successful, and it is doubtful if it paid for the 
cost of its production. These various enterprises of 
his, however, failures though they had been, combined 
to make him a fairly prominent figure in the public 
eye. 

Tourgee was already forming the habit of making 
speeches whenever opportunity offered, in which he 
was apparently utterly reckless of the effects of his 
statements on the feelings of his audience. A South- 
ern gentleman later commented thus on one of these 
speeches delivered at Greensboro : "He let fly a speech 
at Andrew Johnson which, I reckon, made him the 
most hated man in all that community. He said he 
was worse than Catiline ; that he was no improvement 
on Jefferson Davis, etc. While we all listened in 
speechless disgust, I couldn't help admiring the per- 
sistence and pluck of the little devil." 1 

Hated or not, however, the "little devil" would have 
been appointed Judge of the Superior Court, Seventh 

1 New York Tribune, April 4, 1881. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 39 

Judicial District of North Carolina, in the early part 
of 1867, had it not been for the bitterness entertained 
against him by the governor of the state, Jonathan 
Worth, who had read Tourgee's speech which had 
been delivered at the Loyalist Convention in Phila- 
delphia in September, 1866, and who now attacked 
him vehemently for its statements about Southern 
atrocities against the negro. Governor Worth in his 
correspondence gives vent to his opinions about 
Tourgee in the following language: "Tourgee, the 
meanest Yankee who has ever settled among us"; 1 
"this vile wretch Tourgee"; 2 "this contemptible 
Tourgee" 3 and, perhaps most scathing of all, simply, 
"this Tourgee." 4 In giving his reasons for objecting 
to Tourgee as a judge, Worth says : "I am sure I have 
heard more than 100 men speak of Tourgee as a man 
of 'most contemptible character' and I never heard one 
speak well of him." 5 The irascible governor also 
stated on May 26, 1868, that Tourgee had "never 
practised law in this state nor had a license to prac- 
tise" ; 6 but this statement was incorrect, for in a letter 
to the Paymaster General at Washington, March 23, 
1868, Tourgee says that he has held a license to prac- 
tise since 1867, an d objects against being taxed for a 
new license. But the doughty governor's opposition 

1 "The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth," collected and 
edited by J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Raleigh, Edwards & 
Broughton, 1909. Two vols. Vol. II, p. 1120. 

2 Ibid., p. 776. 

8 Ibid., 777. 

'Ibid. 

Ibid., 1 1 14. 

°Ibid., 1213. 



/ 



4 o ALBION W. TOURGEE 

to Tourgee as a judge had merely the effect of post- 
poning that event only a little over a year; for on 
March 21, 1868, Tourgee wrote a letter accepting the 
nomination for the office of judge, and in the election 
which followed he was put in the office by a majority 
of over twenty-five thousand. 

Before this personal triumph, however, an event took 
place with which Tourgee's name is closely associated. 
On January 14, 1868, a Constitutional Convention met 
at Raleigh and one of the members was Tourgee. The 
delegation included 13 Conservatives, 107 Republicans 
(of whom 16 were carpet-baggers) and 13 negroes. 1 
Hence it was that "Individually and collectively the 
^carpet-baggers' controlled the convention absolutely." 2 
Tourgee himself advocated that the entire state debt 
of the new North Carolina should be repudiated. But 
this doctrine was too strong for the majority, being at- 
tacked even by three colored delegates, and so was 
defeated. 3 He was, however, appointed one of three 
commissioners for a term of three years at a salary 
of $200 a month to codify the laws of the State. 4 In 
this capacity he was the chief figure in putting into 
organic law the Code of Civil Procedure, largely a 
Northern idea, copied from the codes of New York 
and Ohio. This code was of course strongly opposed 
by some Southern lawyers, but finally proved its worth, 

1 "Reconstruction in North Carolina," Hamilton, p. 229. 

2 Ibid., 237. 
"Ibid., 238. 
*Ibid. } 239. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE .41 

since it was much less cumbersome than the old code 
had been. 

The following excerpts from a letter of Tourgee's 
to his daughter, dated February 1, 1890, will serve to 
show his own reaction to this convention, to his election 
as judge, and to his first literary work of importance : 
"The fear of starvation and shame led me to fight for 
a place as a member of the Constitutional Convention 
of 1868. I found myself the strongest man in it. I 
suffered almost mortal agony over the task of under- 
taking the duties of the Judgeship in 1868. It was 
easy to me and I won honor in it. ... I do not suppose 
any one who knew me would have advised me to get 
an election to the Convention, to accept the Judgeship, 
or to write 'Toinette.' They are the three things on 
which my successes are all based." 

Whatever may be thought of the tone of this letter, 
written to show his daughter the necessity of follow- 
ing one's own star and of making decisions without 
waiting for advice, it is certain that many Southern 
gentlemen would not have advised him to do any of 
the above things. One of them would doubtless have 
been the person referred to in a letter of Tourgee's 
dated April 2, 1868 : "You would have been in danger 
of spasms if you had seen me drop a platter over an 
opponent's pate at a public dinner last week. He called 
me a 'rascal.' Of course I cared not a flea-bite for his 
words, but if I had not resented them the crowd would 
have set me down as a coward. So I was fool enough 
to do it." This first "fool's errand" episode of which 



42 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

there is any mention doubtless refers to his campaign 
as a candidate for the office of judge, and the incident 
related is but one of many in a campaign of general 
vilification on both sides. It seems that Governor 
Worth was still on the war-path, for in a private letter 
dated April 15, 1868, Tourgee says: "I happen to 
know that Governor Worth used every inducement to 
get some of my enemies here to slander me. ... I in- 
tend to make the old scoundrel smart for it some time 
and perhaps some others." One type of slander directed 
at him was the deliberate charge, printed by several 
newspapers, that he had been in an Ohio prison four 
and one half years for burglary. This malicious lie 
Tourgee at once indignantly denied and offered a re- 
ward of $1000 to anyone who could show tangible 
evidence connecting him with such guilt. It is more 
than doubtful if he could have paid such a sum at that 
particular time, but he was of course aware that he 
was safe in offering to do so. His usual method of 
answering these assaults upon his character, whether 
in his private letters or in articles intended for pub- 
lication, was to state that such low, mean, contemptible 
reptiles as those who were attacking him deserved only 
silent contempt; and he would then forthwith proceed 
to dig up every scurrilous adjective he could think of 
to hurl at their heads, silently contemptuous for any- 
where from five to thirty pages. 

In spite of these numerous enemies of his, however, 
Tourgee was elected judge and began his duties in 
August, 1868, duties which occupied his time for the 
next six years. As his jurisdiction extended over 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 43 

eight counties, he was absent from home much of the 
time. The $5000 per year which his office paid him, 
together with the money received for helping codify 
die laws of the state, enabled him in the following year 
to pay off the still remaining debts of Tourgee & Co., 
as well as to purchase a house and lot on Asheboro 
Street for $3500, which was probably a welcome 
change for him and his wife after their life on the 
nursery farm about four miles west of Greensboro. 
But that he still considered himself underpaid for his 
services on the bench is sufficiently attested by a docu- 
ment drawn up by him in July, 1868, entitled "Reasons 
for the Increase of Judges' Salaries," a document 
which would probably never have seen the light of day 
had he not himself been a judge. 

It was during the period in which he was judge 
that Tourgee experienced the most exciting events of 
his more than ordinarily exciting career. There can 
be little question that his life was in almost constant 
danger during this time. The chief factor in this was 
of course the notorious Ku Klux Klan, the secret or- 
ganization which history and tradition have made so 
familiar as to need no discussion here. Tourgee, with 
his uncompromising carpet-bagger traits, which were 
shown in giving preference to negroes over whites 
whenever suitable opportunity offered, was a perfectly 
natural object for its attack. His private letters during 
this period abound in references to the active hostility 
which this terrorizing band manifested against him. 
He received many notices which definitely fixed the 
time when he was to be assassinated, as well as a paper, 



44 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

pinned by a knife to his door, on which was a picture 
of a coffin and a written notice that he was doomed to 
an agonizing death. On one occasion the place fixed 
for his assassination was the room in which he was 
holding court, the murder to be done after he had 
finished speaking and had turned his back to retire 
through a door in the rear. Luckily the plot was re- 
vealed to him and he held court all the morning, to all 
appearances as unconcernedly as ever ; but when he had 
completed the morning's work, instead of retiring to 
the rear, he walked straight through the crowded 
room across the street to his hotel, where an immediate 
change of clothes was necessary, since his suit was 
damp with perspiration caused by nervous reaction 
after the danger was past. Attempts were also made 
to ambush him, but he fortunately escaped and kept 
doggedly to his task of journeying on horseback to 
hold court in different parts of his jurisdiction. 

By 1870, however, the grim Ku Klux shadow al- 
ways at his heels, together with consideration for the 
terrific strain put upon his wife's nerves when he was 
traveling about constantly menaced by these dangers, 
at last induced him to think seriously of leaving the 
state for a time. His life became more precious and 
necessary than ever in that year too, for on November 
19, 1870, his only child, a daughter, first called Lodie, 
after her mother's middle name, and later Aimee, was 
born; and so, despite great personal bravery, he de- 
cided that prudence made it necessary for him tempor- 
arily to leave the state. The Ku Klux was dogging 
him hotter than ever now, because in the summer of 



f 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 45 

1870 a strictly private letter of his had been published 
by Governor Holden, which had virulently attacked 
the Ku Klux for its various outrages on the negroes, 
and had cited many specific cases of its misdeeds. 
Hence it was that one of his August letters had the 
following: "I think .... it may be mere common 
prudence to get away from K. K. K. cords and daggers 
for a year or two. I am not going to give up my grip, 
but just let go to get a new hold.". Another letter of 
the same month contains this outburst: "I wouldn't 
mind yellow fever, cholera, fleas, earthquakes, vertigo, 
smallpox, cannibalism, icebergs, sharks, or any other 
name or shape of horror — provided always there are 
no K. K. K." And this same letter, marked "confiden- 
tial," has this closing passage: "Now — you go and 
publish this a la Holden and if you are not damned for 
it it shall not be my fault." What Tourgee particularly 
wished was the Consulate in South America, more 
particularly still in Chile, for he was fairly proficient 
in Spanish, partly acquired, as will be remembered, 
while he was a prisoner of war. He would have been 
satisfied had the salary been sufficient only to pay his 
expenses. But the position did not come ; accordingly, 
not having found any opening that suited him, he 
remained where he was, still braving the dangers of 
the Ku Klux, even though he was "so sick of the 

whole d d country," as another letter puts it. 

The following year saw him again chasing the ever 
vanishing phantom of success in business. He con- 
ceived the idea that some of the timber in the state 
might profitably be converted into various sorts of tool- 



46 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

handles, and then followed the formation of the North 
Carolina Handle Company. This new firm was 
started with the enthusiasm that he always showed 
when he was just entering upon some new venture, 
an enthusiasm that lasted to the end of his life, despite 
the fact that he always failed signally in everything 
that demanded business ability. In February, 1871, 
he was trying to mortgage his property to obtain funds 
for the new company, a practice which he always fol- 
lowed when in pursuit of any new financial chimera. 
On February 22 he said in a letter : "I know but little 
more than I did. ... as to where the funds are com- 
ing from. ... I am just going to trust blindly in my 
usual luck and go on until I come out or am stopped 
entirely." Thus, much as Robinson Crusoe hollowed 
out his boat without considering how he was going to 
launch it, Tourgee started in great optimism to build 
the handle factory when he had no funds with which 
to complete it. Further details of this affair are not 
very clear, though there are still a few letters extant 
showing that some business was done. Apparently it- 
lasted till the autum of 1873, when the panic came. 
It left him with liabilities of $30,000 and only a 
quantity of unsalable stock with which to meet them; 
for what little he had at this time consisted in mort- 
gages on real estate. He set himself to work to pay 
off these debts with his characteristic determination, 
as a letter of his dated June 20, 1876, shows: "The 
monetary misfortunes of which you are already in- 
formed have given me two years of very hard work, 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 47 

though I can now see that they have been of great 
advantage to me." 

It is, however, Tourgee, the successful novelist, 
rather than Tourgee, the unsuccessful business man, 
who is of chief interest; for his literary labors during 
these eventful years had again been resumed. At vari- 
ous times from 1866 to 1870 he had written articles 
of a political nature to some of the newspapers in his 
vicinity, signed "Wenckar," a variation of his mother's 
maiden name. Several fragments of manuscripts of 
his written during this period are extant, one being 
the outlined chapters of what was apparently to be a 
novel called "My Horses," full of horses and sentiment. 
He was a great lover of horses all his life and at 
various times owned some fine "steppers." Other 
literary relics of this period are : the concluding chap- 
ters of a novel whose events took place in Scotland, a 
story of "adventure and love"; fragmentary remains 
of a very long poem dealing with cruelty to the negro ; 
and several speeches delivered on various memorial 
days in the South, filled with the usual patriotic 
platitudes. During 1871 and 1872, he wrote a dozen 
or so articles to the newspapers under the pseudonym 
of "God's Anynted Phue," a supposedly popular ren- 
dering of "God's Anointed Few." These articles, in 
the form of poems, letters and sermons, ironically at- 
tack the pride, clannishness and class hatred which 
Tourgee always attributed to the Southerners, "God's 
Anynted Phue" being a particularly crass example of 
Southern egotism. 



48 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

But it was not until 1874 that his first major work 
appeared. That year saw the publication of 
"Toinette," which had, as a matter of fact, been written 
in 1868-9. Following a practice which had already 
been established, and which was doubtless begun as a 
means of avoiding personal attacks, Tourgee published 
this book under the non de plume "Henry Churton." 
In 1 88 1, when the book reappeared under his own 
name with the new title, "A Royal Gentleman," he 
wrote a preface which makes plain his purpose in 
penning the story. He believed that the anti-slavery 
writers of the North had tended to magnify the chief 
apparent evil of slavery — cruelty to the negro — at the 
expense of what was the basis of the whole system, 
the Southern aristocratic conception of society, in 
which the prime element was pride of caste. With this 
idea in mind, he attempted to delineate types of the 
slave, the freeman, the "poor white," and the "royal 
gentleman," or the slave-holder. He wished also to 
show that, while slavery in name had been abolished, 
it was actually as much alive as ever, because the re- 
sults of the Civil War had not changed, but rather 
strengthened, the belief of the Southerners in their 
superiority to the people of the North, and in their 
right to dominate the negro, if not physically, at least 
socially and politically. In other words, the Civil 
War had merely lopped off a few branches from the 
tree of slavery, but had left its roots and trunk un- 
touched. From all this it followed, still according to 
Tourgee, that slavery was a much greater evil to the 
slave-holder than to the slave himself. These, then, 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 49 

were the several ideas underlying this story, which 
opens in 1858 and runs briefly thus: 

Geoffrey Hunter, the "royal gentleman," is a typical 
young Southern lawyer, in whose father's house is 
Toinette, a beautiful slave who has only a trace of 
dark blood in her veins, and of whom he is very fond. 
He aids her in obtaining an education, with the in- 
tention of giving her her freedom, which he finally 
does. Meanwhile the usual result of such close 
intimacy follows, the Civil War comes, and Geoffrey 
goes to fight, leaving Toinette and their child at his 
home. He is severely wounded and Toinette comes to 
nurse him back to> life and health ; but when he proposes 
a renewal of their old intimacy, she declines unless he 
will marry her. This he of course angrily refuses to 
do, still regarding her as his chattel; she accordingly 
leaves him for good and they both live sorrowfully 
ever after. 

This tale contains most of the faults and virtues 
which subsequently appeared in Tourgee's stories. 
The plot is artificial, depending largely upon coin- 
cidence; the characters, though called "types," are far 
from typical, because their traits are so much exagger- 
ated. The slave, Toinette, is impossibly idealized; it 
is doubtful if one in a million of her class ever ap- 
proached her in combined beauty, grace, intellect, and 
morality — for she is of course held blameless of her 
relations with Hunter. He is a possible figure, though 
he represents Tourgee's conception of the typical 
Southern gentleman rather than the actuality. The 
"poor white," Betty Certain, is also idealized far be- 



50 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

yond her class. There are several reminders of Gothic 
Romance in the form of a supposed ghost, a concealed 
drawer, and in the attempt to create different kinds of 
physical horror of the midnight variety. The story is 
constantly interrupted by pronouncements against 
slavery, and eulogies of Lincoln, who is unnecessarily, 
not to say unhistorically, dragged in several times. 
And yet the tale is by no means lacking in a certain 
kind of merit. Impossible as the highly sentimentalized 
Toinette is, this first of the large family of idealized 
negroes portrayed by Tourgee is possibly the most im- 
pressive creation of the whole lot. Betty Certain, 
despite the unconvincing complexity of her character, 
is a striking figure at times. And in melodramatic 
narrative, which was always Tourgee's forte as a 
novelist, there are several really powerful specimens : 
Hunter's midnight search for the ghost, his rescue of 
his drowning son, and especially the fight between 
Betty Certain and Toinette' s ghostly mother. All in 
all, however, it can justly be said that Tourgee's re- 
mark in the preface to the 1881 volume, "it is a picture 
of facts" while not completely wrong is certainly 
largely so, for he here made the same error which he 
continued to repeat all his life: he rarely saw facts, 
but only their distorted images in the imperfect mirror 
of his strongly biased personality. The book, printed 
partly to help pay his debts, failed in that purpose. A 
letter from his publishers, Fords, Howard, and Hul- 
bert, New York, dated July 1, 1875, states that only 
2331 copies had been sold and that the loss on the 
edition had been about $1100. These excerpts from 



t 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 51 

a letter to his wife, September 4, 1875, also corroborate 
the almost certain fact of the book's failure : "I fear 
nothing can save us from complete wreck ... as to 
estate and property ... If 'Toinette' had only been 
a success" — but the rest of the sentence need not be 
quoted. 

Meanwhile his career as a judge was rapidly coming 
to an end, though the appellation clung to him through 
all his life. 1 One reform which he caused to be put 
into execution was the installation of heating systems 
in all the jails in his district ; for, being much annoyed 
to discover that there had never been a fire in any 
North Carolina jail, he required a grand jury to ascer- 
tain the facts and, moved doubtless by memories of 
his own prison experiences, caused the remedy to be 
applied. The longer he was judge, the stronger be- 
came the opposition of his enemies, and in 1873 they 
unsuccessfully tried to secure his impeachment. On 
February 19 of the previous year he had tendered his 
resignation as a member of the board of trustees of 
the University of North Carolina, because the press 
had so severely attacked his appointment that he feared 
that, if he continued in that capacity, he might injure 
the reputation of the institution. In 1874 his friends 
advanced his name as a candidate for the Congressional 
nomination ; but though he indicated his willingness to 
accept, in the usual "This-honor-has-been-forced-upon- 

1 While serving as judge, Tourgee recorded many sworn testi- 
monials of negroes who had been the victims of Ku Klux out- 
rages, and he later made use of many of these documents in 
"The Invisible Empire." 



52 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

me-against-my-wishes" type of speech, the opposition 
was too strong and, much to his chagrin, he failed to 
obtain the nomination. In the following year, how- 
ever, he was re-elected as a delegate to the second Con- 
stitutional Convention at Raleigh, by the largest ma- 
jority ever given to a candidate from his county. This 
Convention strove to protect what had been accom- 
plished by the Convention of 1868, and hence was 
negative in character. During this second Convention, 
a prominent Democrat made public threats to shoot 
Tourgee ; but, fearless as usual, he borrowed a revolver 
from a friend, walked up to the man in a public place 
and "remained staring fixedly at him for several 
moments" ; but no attempt was made to put the threat 
into execution. 

In February, 1876, President Grant appointed 
Tourgee to the position of Pension Agent at Raleigh, 
and his wife was appointed clerk to administer oaths. 
His departure from Greensboro to Raleigh was 
graphically depicted by O. Henry, then a lad of four- 
teen living in Greensboro, who drew a cartoon en- 
titled "Judge Tourgee Leaving Greensboro," which 
represents him sailing through the air on angelic wings, 
his left hand holding a carpet-bag, his right a handker- 
chief used to wipe away the tears which can be seen 
dropping from his one good eye. 1 So he left the place 
which had been a residence rather than a home for 
the last eleven years, but the hatred of his enemies 
still followed him throughout all his stay at Raleigh. 

lu O. Henry Biography," C. Alphonso Smith, Doubleday, Page 
& Co., Garden City, N. Y., 1916, p. 60. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 53 

As a matter of fact, his actual home was still at Greens- 
boro, for he spent much time at his mother-in-law's 
house there and bought no residence in Raleigh, but 
lived in a hotel; also, he retained his law office at 
Greensboro. In a letter written April 15, 1877, he 
says that the feeling against him since his appoint- 
ment as Pension Agent has been stronger than ever, 
if possible, and that he now merely endures what he 
cannot avoid. He curses his folly in ever going South, 
and says he has stopped going to church because of 
persecution and vilification at the hands of supposedly 
Christian brethren; he bitterly attacks the South and 
all things Southern, and asks the friend to whom the 
letter was directed to be very discreet because it is "all 
I can do to live among these people now," and he can- 
not leave the South at present without serious financial 
loss. 

In his new position, his wife did nearly all the actual 
work while he practised law, endeavoring by these com- 
bined means to pay off his debts. During the Presi- 
dential campaign of 1876, he made numerous speeches 
for the Republican candidate. Two years later he 
closed his law office to run for Congress in the Fifth 
Congressional District, and succeeded in materially 
reducing the majority of his Democratic opponent, but 
failed to be elected. He also lost much money by this 
venture, but was nevertheless happy in the thought 
that he was fighting for reform. 

The closing period of Tourgee's fourteen-year resi- 
dence in the South was a time of constantly increasing 
literary activity on his part. While still a judge at 



54 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

Greensboro, he wrote two novelettes, both printed in 
.the same volume, "John Eax" [pronounced Eex] and 
"Mamelon," two "rifts in the shadow" of Southern 
conditions, as the preface says, that almost constantly 
overhung him. The rift is not especially pronounced 
in either tale, however, for both deal largely with war 
conditions. The hero of "John Eax," Charles De 
Jeunette, of Huguenot ancestry, a lawyer by profes- 
sion, marries Alice Bain, an English girl of low social 
rank, and thus brings upon himself the bitter hatred of 
his family. He is imprisoned for debt, but escapes and 
espouses the cause of the North in the Civil War, in 
which he becomes a general ; and eventually, in order 
to inherit a large fortune left to his wife by her great- 
grandfather, John Eax, he assumes that name himself, 
this being a condition stipulated in the will. The 
autobiographical elements in this story are plainly 
evident in the hero's birth, profession and war ac- 
tivities, as is true of nearly all of Tourgee's novels. 
After the brief resume given above, it need hardly 
be said that the story is almost absolutely devoid of 
any semblance of originality, since it has all the ear- 
marks of the story of adventure plus sentiment which 
was so popular in Tourgee's day. It has the superb 
horses, the highly colored narrative, the impossible 
evolutions of character, and the attacks upon the 
South, so characteristic of him. The tale had its origin 
in a story, related to> Tourgee by a good story-teller, 
which dealt with an old family that had once been 
prominent in that vicinity. On the day after he heard 
this story, he was unable, even amid the routine af- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 55 

fairs of a country court, to banish it with all its pos- 
sibilities from his mind; and that night, from sunset 
till sunrise, he wrote the one hundred and thirty-five 
pages that make up the tale. Even if the physical 
possibility of penning a story of one hundred and 
thirty-five pages in a single night be granted, candor 
still necessitates the comment that Tour gee's reputa- 
tion would have suffered very little had he spent that 
night sleeping the sleep of the unimaginative just. 

"Mamelon" had its inception in an inscription read 
on a tombstone in a neglected church-yard, whither 
Tourgee wandered one day in the spring of 1874 dur- 
ing a lull in court affairs; and there it was that the 
story thus suggested took shape in his mind, the first 
chapters being written in the silence of the cemetery. 
The tale is founded directly upon his already narrated 
experiences with the ill-fated North Carolina Handle 
Company. The hero, Paul Dewar, weds his childhood 
sweetheart, Sue Moyer, and, as is to be expected, be- 
comes a general in the Civil War. After the war, 
impressed with the abundance of hickory in his locality, 
the Carolinas, he starts a handle factory which lasts 
until the panic of 1873. Discouraged by this disaster, 
he attempts to take his own life; but the bullet, after 
seriously wounding him, conveniently leaves its mark 
upon a stone which he, a student of geology, has col- 
lected, together with many other relics, from an Indian 
mound dubbed "Mamelon." The stone thus happily 
scarred by the providential bit of lead is found to con- 
tain corundum, and the New York Corundum Com- 
pany eventually becomes as successful as one wishes 



f 



56 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

that the North Carolina Handle Company might have 
oecome. The French ancestry of the hero, who, though 
not as usual a lawyer, is persuaded by his wife to 
study law, together with his final abundant success, 
and the features already mentioned, all combine to 
make a largely autobiographic and almost completely 
uninspired tale, which by no means implies that it does 
not make entertaining reading. 

A letter-head found in Tourgee's personal effects 
witnesses that during the winter of 1875-6 he had 
found a new means of remuneration, in which he was 
ever after intermittently engaged. He gave lectures on 
the following topics : 'The Coming Crusade" ; "Today 
in Account with Yesterday"; "Out of the Strong- 
Sweetness" ; "The Ben Adhemite Era" ; and "Southern 
Humor." A copy of the "Ben Adhemite Era" only has 
been found, which, based on Leigh Hunt's familiar 
poem, paints the future in glowing colors ; but it may 
safely be inferred from the titles that most of the other 
lectures dealt with the Reconstruction Period as well. 
This letter-head also states that the lectures were to 
be given by "Albion W. Tourgee, Late Judge of the 
Superior Court," and the "Author of 'Toinette' " ; 
hence it appears that by this time "Henry Churton" 
had dropped his false garments and assumed genuine 
judicial robes, although as late as 1875, before reveal- 
ing himself to the public, "Henry Churton" still wrote 
numerous articles to Southern newspapers, which at- 
tempted to show that the policy of Reconstruction was 
a failure. 

The residence at Raleigh saw the production of 



ALBION W. TOURGEE ST. 

Tourgee's final literary labors completed in the South. 
Two were of a similar kind and were work of a 
technically legal nature. "The Code of Civil Procedure 
of North Carolina with Notes and Decisions," and "A 
Digest of Cited Cases in the North Carolina Reports," 
were both copyrighted February 9, 1878. The preface 
to the former volume states that the "object of this 
volume is to enable the professional reader more easily, 
quickly and certainly to ascertain what is the law in 
regard to practice in Civil Action and Special Plead- 
ings. " Tourgee received many letters of praise for 
the production of this useful book, which cost him 
much hard labor. It was of course written specifically 
for North Carolina lawyers, as was the "Digest of 
Cited Cases," of which there was an edition of six 
hundred copies which sold for twelve dollars each. 

During this same year, The North State, a paper 
in Greensboro, published weekly from March 18 to 
May 28, and then irregularly until August 12, the "C" 
letters, which occasioned a really huge amount of 
speculation in both North and South as to their author- 
ship and pertinence. These letters, which occupied 
about two large newspaper columns and always closed, 
"We shall see. 'C," were distinctly journalistic in 
tone, being written in homely, popular style, despite 
frequent poetical and classical quotations. They con- 
sisted of attacks against the Ku Klux, defenses of the 
negro, and much satire directed against Democratic 
candidates for political offices, particularly the bench. 
The intense partisanship, inexcusable personal scurril- 
ity and mud-slinging which were everywhere present in 



58 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

them, together with their graphic style, caused several 
papers to rank them even higher than the notorious 
"Letters of Junius." One person especially attacked 
in them, Judge Fowle of Raleigh, suspected that 
Tourgee was the author; and, chancing to meet him 
one day on the streets of Raleigh, directly accused him 
of the authorship and followed his charge with a 
shower of fisticuffs, to which Tourgee promptly 
retaliated. He suffered more than his justly furious 
antagonist in this brachial contest, as his discolored 
countenance indicated for some time, although his 
epistolary accounts of this affair stoutly maintain the 
contrary. After this occurrence became known, it was 
no longer possible for "C" to hide his identity from 
a long curious public. 

Tourgee's period of residence in the South was now 
nearly ended. Hatred against him had been steadily 
waxing stronger ever since his arrival there; and by 
1879 he was satisfied that the only sensible course for 
him to pursue was to return to the section for which 
he had fought and had always defended by tongue and 
pen. During the summer of 1879 he spent his time 
in closing his business affairs, and in the month of 
August he and his family boarded a New York train, 
incidentally taking several uncompleted manuscripts, 
one of which, about to appear in printed form, was 
destined soon to make his name "known to almost 
every household," as a convenient expression has it. 



CHAPTER III 
"A FOOL'S ERRAND" 

The New York Tribune, September 3, 1879, de- 
voted one and a half columns of its front page to an 
interview granted by Tourgee to one of its reporters 
on his return North. In this interview Tourgee defi- 
nitely states that he had returned to a more congenial 
atmosphere because of Southern antagonism to all 
things Northern, and particularly because of its mani- 
festations of hatred against himself. His whereabouts 
for the next three months are not definitely known, 
but it is certain that most of this time was spent in 
New York attending to the publication of the two 
books which will now be considered in detail. Al- 
though "Figs and Thistles" appeared a month and a 
half earlier than "A Fool's Errand," the greater 
historical importance of the latter work makes it ad- 
visable to discuss it first. 

On October 4, 1879, the following notice appeared 
in the advertising pages of the New York Tribune: 
"Published This Day. Figs and Thistles. . . . Ready 
shortly, A Fool's Errand. Fords, Howard and Hul- 
bert" On November 10, the Literary Notes depart- 
ment in the Tribune contained this item: "The ad- 

59 



60 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

vance demand for 'A Fool's Errand' has been so great 
that Fords, Howard and Hulbert have decided to de- 
lay the publication of it until November 15, in order 
to prepare a larger edition." And on that date the same 
paper contained another advertisement stating that "A 
Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools," could be pur- 
chased at all bookstores or at the publishers. The book 
which the public was thus anticipating, and which it 
has since generally regarded as the first literary effort 
dealing with the Reconstruction Era; the book also 
which for the next few months was probably the most 
discussed American novel of the day; and the book 
which was undoubtedly Tourgee's most successful 
work, at any rate so far as earnings and popularity are 
concerned, certainly deserves considerable attention. 

He himself has told how it came to be written, in a 
personal letter from Bordeaux, August 24, 1903. 
"Early on a Sunday morning in the month of July, 
1877, in the city of Raleigh, . . . after a sleepless 
night spent in restless review of events which had oc- 
curred since the close of the war of the Rebellion, 
especially in regard to the relations of Northern and 
Southern ideas, I wakened my wife and said, 'I am go- 
ing to write a book and call it "A Fool's Errand".' I 
immediately arose, went into an adjoining room and 
that day wrote three chapters of that work." This story 
may be continued by a passage taken from the Personal. 
column of the Tribune, April 22, 1881, in which 
Tourgee is quoted thus: "I laid it [the manuscript of 
these three chapters] away and did not take it up again 
till June, 1879, when the printing began. One chapter 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 61 

I wrote twenty times, and tore it down out of the type 
three times. Each time I threw my manuscript into 
the fire and entirely rewrote the chapter. I could never 
patch up." Apropos of the above, it may be remarked 
that Tourgee very frequently rewrote his different 
articles several times, to the constant despair of his 
wife, who was thus obliged to re-copy them a like num- 
ber of times, and that he often wrote only in time to 
keep the printers busy. 

So much for the actual composition of the tale. 
In the preface of "Hot Plowshares," May, 1883, 
Tourgee first discusses the serial idea that underlay the 
writing of six of his novels: "Many years ago the 
author conceived the idea that he might aid some of 
his fellow-countrymen and country-women to a juster 
comprehension of these things [Northern and South- 
ern divergences] by a series of works which should 
give, in the form of fictitious narrative, the effects of 
these distinct and contrasted civilizations upon various 
types of characters and during specific periods of the 
great transition. Beginning their preparation in 1867, 
... he has worked patiently and honestly and zeal- 
ously to complete his analysis of the representative 
groups of characters. . . . The period covered by the 
now completed series of six volumes extends from 
twenty years before the war until twelve years after it. 
. . .In chronological order they would stand as fol- 
lows : 'Hot Plowshares', 'Figs and Thistles', 'A Royal 
Gentleman', 'A Fool's Errand', 'Bricks Without 
Straw', 'John Eax'." As has been true with more 
than one author of a series of novels, it is highly prob- 



62 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

able that this conception was by no means as clear in 
Tourgee' s mind in 1867 as it was in 1883; for his 
wife, in a letter to The Buffalo Express, October 14, 
1908, lays much emphasis upon the fact that Tourgee 
did not want to write any more books dealing with 
Southern conditions after writing "A Fool's Errand," 
for he feared that he would merely repeat what he had 
already written. His publishers, however, insisted, 
and he finally yielded to their importunity. 

The book has its title because its hero goes through 
almost identically the same experiences that Tourgee 
himself had undergone, and comes to the conclusion 
which he had come to, that the attempt of the North 
to superimpose its type of civilization upon the South 
was a "fool's errand." The title was chosen also with 
an eye to possible pecuniary profit, for we are told 
that "the writer believed that th$ form of the title 
would constitute one of those pleasant literary conun- 
drums which have a distinct market value, and would 
consequently enhance the sale of the book." x Its story 
is a picture of the aftermath of the Civil War in the 
South, and the effects upon two civilizations of that 
mighty upheaval. The similarity of its hero to Tourgee 
is even more pronounced than in any of his other 
books. Comfort Servosse, of French ancestry, whose 
family moves west near Detroit, is a college graduate 
and a lawyer. In the cause of the North he becomes 
a brigadier-general, but loses his health and hence de- 
cides to go South with his wife (Metta Ward before 
marriage) and small daughter, to practise law. There 
1 Our Continent, Vol. V, p. 604. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 63 

he is elected delegate to the Constitutional Convention 
of his state, and works for the same reforms which 
Tour gee had advocated in the Convention of 1868. 
His life is often endangered by the Ku Klux, and he 
loses the sympathy of nearly all save the negroes and 
carpet-baggers. Metta is clearly enough modeled on 
Mrs. Tourgee, and the Reverend Enos Martin, Ser- 
vosse's former college president, is with little doubt a 
picture of M. B. Anderson, President of Rochester 
University. There is also a suspicious resemblance 
between the negro, Jerry Hunt, and Mrs. Stowe's 
Uncle Tom. Tourgee often angrily denied that any 
of the characters in his stories had flesh-and-blood 
prototypes, but this denial is of as little value as his 
constant reiteration that the chief merit of his stories 
is their "honest, uncompromising truthfulness of 
portraiture," as the preface to "A Fool's Errand" puts 
it. This apparent "truthfulness of portraiture" was 
without doubt largely responsible for the great popular- 
ity of the book; but, like many other generalizations 
avidly accepted by the public, it is founded on the 
sands. 

Tourgee makes much use of the Richardsonian de- 
vice of letters, and constantly interrupts the really 
powerful narrative with disquisitions on history, curses 
loud but not always deep against the Northern policy 
of Reconstruction, attacks on the South, and exuberant 
praise of the negro. These interruptions, indeed, al- 
most spoil the story as a story, since their frequent 
recurrences are so excessively irritating to the reader. 
The best narrative is contained in the chapter "A Race 



64 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

Against Time," in which Lily Servosse on her high- 
mettled steed saves her father's life from the Ku Klux, 
in the nick of time of course, for as usual the several 
crises in the tale are happily manipulated by coin- 
cidence. There is much grisly realism in the scenes 
where the ravages of the Ku Klux are shown. The 
dialogue is fairly life-like, but the story, like Tourgee's 
other novels, is prevailingly deficient in humor, despite, 
or rather because of, his conscious attempts to attain it ; 
it was in his letters, when he was not taking himself 
seriously as he always does in his novels, that there 
is often cause for real mirth. The story contains the 
usual sentimental elements in the relation between 
Servosse's daughter, Lily, and Melville Gurney, son 
of a Confederate general. These young people, after 
surmounting the customary obstacles strewn upon the 
course of their true love, are happily united by the 
death of Servosse, an event which causes the heart 
of the ex-Confederate general to relinquish its hatred 
toward a "carpet-bagger" daughter-in-law. Yet in 
spite of the obvious faults which are inherent in this 
novel, as in others of its kind, the story really grips, as 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" grips, because in each case the 
author had a burning message to give the world. 

And it is the message of "A Fool's Errand" that is 
of chief importance, to which the largely artificial 
narrative was merely a means of attracting public at- 
tention. 

On March 2, 1867, the Reconstruction Act had gone 
into operation, which was to be the Northern policy 
toward the South for the next ten years. "This famous 



m 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 65 

law consisted of two parts: five of its six sections pro- 
vided for the establishment and administration of a 
rigorous and comprehensive military government 
throughout the ten states not yet restored to the Union ; 
while the remaining section, the fifth, declared that 
the restoration of the states should be effected only 
after reorganization, on the basis of general negro en- 
franchisement and limited rebel disfranchisement." 1 
That this policy was short-sighted and fatally destruc- 
tive of the very objects it sought to attain, the next ten 
years amply demonstrated. Tourgee himself has in- 
dicated what its immediate effect was. "So the line 
of demarcation was drawn. Upon the one side were 
found only those who constituted what was termed 
respectable people, — the bulk of those of the white race 
who had ruled the South in the ante bellum days, who 
had fostered slavery, and been fattened by it, who had 
made it the dominant power in the nation, together 
with the mass of those whose courage and capacity 
had organized rebellion, and led the South in that 
marvelous struggle for separation. On the other side 
were the pariahs of the land, to designate the different 
classes of which three words were used: 'Niggers/ 
the new-enfranchised African voters; 'Scalawags/ 
the native whites who were willing to accept the re- 
construction measures; and 'Carpet-baggers/ all men 
of Northern birth, resident in the South, who should 
elect to speak or act in favor of such reconstruction' ' 
(pp. 124-5). Tourgee had, in the Convention of 1868, 

1 "Reconstruction Political and Social," by W. A. Dunning, 
P- 93. 



66 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

insisted upon the following reforms which the hero of 
the story also advocates : ( i ) Equal civil and political 
rights for all men; (2) Abolition of property qualifi- 
cations for voters, officers and jurors; (3) Election by 
the people of all officers; (4) Penal reform — the 
abolition of the whipping-post, the stocks and the 
branding-iron, and the reduction of capital crimes 
from seventeen to one or at most two; (5) A uniform 
system of taxation; (6) An effective system of public 
schools (p. 141). In other words, Tourgee was in 
1868, before reaping the results of his "fool's errand," 
a firm believer in the Northern policy of Reconstruc- 
tion. He had, as he says, "no idea that he was com- 
mitting an enormity ; but from that day he became an 
outlaw in the land where he had hoped to have made 
a home, and which he desired faithfully to serve" 

(p. 141). 

But bitter experience taught him the folly of thus 
trying to force a proud, aristocratic people to accept a 
system of government so utterly opposed to all their 
traditions; and at the end of his Southern residence 
he came to believe that only the enforcement of the 
sixth item in the above list would produce the results 
desired in the North. He first formulated this definite 
educational policy, a policy to which he devoted the 
larger part of his time for the next ten years or more, 
at the end of "A Fool's Errand," where his mouth- 
piece, Servosse, states the fundamental error of the Re- 
construction Act, and its remedy : "We tried to super- 
impose the civilization, the idea of the North, upon the 
South at a moment's warning. ... So we tried to 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 67 

build up communities there which should be identical in 
thought, sentiment, growth, and development, with 
those of the North. It was A FOOL'S ERRAND" (p. 
341). The remedy for this state of affairs, according 
to Tourgee, cannot come from within but must come 
from without. "The Nation nourished and protected 
slavery. . . . Now let the Nation undo the evil it has per- 
mitted and encouraged. Let it educate those whom it 
made ignorant, and protect those whom it made weak. 
It is not a matter of favor to the black, but of safety 
to the Nation. Make the spelling-book the scepter of 
national power. Let the Nation educate the colored 
man and the poor-white man because the Nation held 
them in bondage, and is responsible for their education ; 
educate the voter because the Nation cannot afford that 
he should be ignorant" (pp. 346-7). In this book 
Tourgee thus merely indicates the general remedy; he 
was shortly to argue for the specific educational meth- 
ods which he regarded as necessary to effect the results 
which the Reconstruction policy had failed to attain. 

Scarcely had this book been given by the press to 
an already expectant public when the first edition was 
sold, and for the next year edition after edition fol- 
lowed in almost bi-monthly succession. The New York 
Tribune in its Literary Notes, December 3, 1879, 
makes the following comment: "Few works of the 
day have had a more rapid and immediate success than 
'A Fool's Errand' now enjoys. No book on the shop 
counters sells better and the fame of it has been carried 
on the wings of newspapers into every State if not 
county in the land. Its reception in the South has not 



68 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

been of the most cordial kind, though the merit of it 
as a composition is not denied." This statement is al- 
most literally true. Scores of Northern newspapers 
spoke in the most extravagant praise of the book's 
literary worth. Ulysses S. Grant at this time delivered 
a speech in which he casually made a favorable refer- 
ence to "A Fool's Errand," and on the following day 
the firm of Fords, Howard and Hulbert was deluged 
with a shower of telegrams requesting copies of the 
book. The unknown author was heralded as the 
"Victor Hugo of America," and many prophecies were 
made that the "great American novelist" had at last 
arrived. Harper's Magazine contained perhaps the 
most adequate and restrained contemporary criticism. 
"It can scarcely be called a love story. ... It is 
rather an earnest and at times passionate philippic in 
narrative form against the reconstruction policy. . . . 
The volume is one-sided, but intensely in earnest." 1 
Its Northern popularity was of course not reflected in 
the South. A letter from the New Orleans Custom 
House, December 22, 1879, informed the publishers 
that the book was not on sale there because Southern 
sentiment was against it, and hence sale by subscription 
only was advisable. The Raleigh Observer grudgingly 
admitted that the story "is a powerfully written work, 
and destined, we fear, to do as much harm in the world 
as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' to which it is, indeed, a com- 
panion piece." Meanwhile speculation as to the author 
was rife. The Literary Notes in the New York Trib- 
une, January 24, 1880, hazards the following guess: 
1 Harper's Magazine, February, 1880, p. 472. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 69 

"The list of persons to whom has been attributed the 
authorship of 'A Fool's Errand' grows apace. [Some of 
those mentioned by the Tribune were : the governor of 
South Carolina, General Ames of Mississippi, Edmund 
Kirk, General Joseph Abbott, Tourgee, and particu- 
larly Mrs. Stowe.] Evidently the author does not wish 
to be known; but those who have guessed Judge 
Tourgee can afford to stick to their guess." As late as 
August 25, 1880, the same paper says : " 'A Fool's Er- 
rand' is still selling by the thousand, and the publishers 
have found it convenient to make duplicate plates and 
print simultaneously in New York and Boston." 1 

Perhaps it will be well to see what unbiased critics 
at a later day thought of this book, after the tumult 
and shouting of contemporary criticism had died away 
and the story was almost forgotten. The Bookman 
speaks thus : "Of course Judge Tourgee' s book was 
not to be compared with Mrs. Stowe's. Its subject 

1 Accounts of sales regularly sent to Tourgee by Fords, Howard 
and Hulbert indicate that most of the claims as to the sale of 
"A Fool's Errand" were exaggerated. No record has been 
found of the number of copies in the first edition, but by 
January I, 1880, 5281 copies had been sold, including 300 in 
England. By June 30, 1880, 43,653 copies had been sold, and 
by December 31, 1880, 41,236 more. In 1881 about 9000 copies 
were disposed of, in 1882 about 2500, and from that time on 
not more than 2000 copies per year. It would thus seem that the 
total sale was not much more than 100,000 copies, but there 
appear to have been several pirated editions both in this country 
and in England; at any rate, Tourgee made this charge several 
times, and was always bitter against both national and inter- 
national copyright laws. It is thus possible that the total sales 
of the book may have neared the 200,000 mark, for some 25,000 
copies of "A Fool's Errand" were sold in the same volume with 
"The Invisible Empire." 



7o ALBION W. TOURGEE 

made a more limited appeal; its author had no such 
emotional power as hers ; and many chapters, especially 
toward the end, read like political tracts. Yet none the 
less, here is the most powerful and moving story of the 
Reconstruction period that has yet been written." 1 
The Arena has this comment, relative to a new edition 
of "A Fool's Errand" : "In our judgment 'A Fool's 
Errand' is the most valuable historical contribution to 
the Reconstruction period that romance literature has 
yet given us. . . . Aside from its historical value, 'A 
Fool's Errand' is a beautiful romance and an im- 
portant contribution to American fiction that merits a 
permanent place in literature." 2 Professor C. Alphonso 
Smith, in his "O. Henry Biography," says: "After 
reading many special treatises and university disserta- 
tions on the kind of Reconstruction attempted in the 
South I find in 'The Fool's Errand' the wisest state- 
ment of the whole question yet made." 3 

The mystery of the authorship of the story was 
definitely settled in the summer of 1880 when, on May 
22, "The Invisible Empire" appeared, bound in the 
same volume as "A Fool's Errand," with Tourgee's 
name on the title page as author of both works. "The 
Invisible Empire" aims to do about what Mrs. Stowe's 
"A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" had done; that is, 
present the public with authenticated records of events, 
which, though not precisely those narrated in the re- 
spective tales, were yet almost exact analogies. The 

1 Bookman, July, 1905, pp. 458-9. 

2 Arena, September, 1902, pp. 333-4. 
8 "O. Henry Biography," p. 63. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 71 

volume cites many cases of Ku Klux outrages, and 
closes with an appeal emphasizing the necessity of 
national education as the basis of real reconstruction. 
It was printed only as a joint work with "A Fool's 
Errand," and was sold only by subscription at two 
dollars per volume. Over twenty thousand copies were 
sold in the first half year of its existence. 

As has already been mentioned, "Figs and Thistles," 
the second in the series of six Reconstruction novels, 
appeared on October 4, 1879. Since it preceded the 
publication of the vastly more popular "A Fool's 
Errand" by less than a month and a half, it attracted 
much less attention. Furthermore, it dealt not at all 
with Reconstruction problems, but its events took place 
wholly in the North; more particularly, the scenes of 
action are mostly in Ohio, and Tourgee himself said 
that in this story he paid a debt of love to his childhood 
home. The period of time covered is 1850-1872. 
Markham Churr, the chief figure in the tale, embodies 
the usual autobiographical qualities of a Tourgee 
hero : he is a college graduate, a lawyer, and a soldier 
in the Union cause. Of special similitude is the wound- 
ing of Churr in the Battle of Bull Run, his consequent 
confinement in a private house in Washington, his 
slow recovery in his Ohio home in the spring of 1862, 
and his return to the army. Eventually he attains the 
rank of brigadier-general, luckily inherits a large for- 
tune, and is sent to Congress ; these were honors which 
Tourgee never attained, but his heroes are always a 
combination of genuine similarity to himself, plus sev- 
eral higher attainments of which he apparently deemed 



72 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

himself amply worthy. Many critics thought that this 
story was intended to be a life of James A. Garfield, 
here concealed as Markham Churr; but this theory is 
rendered unlikely, not so much because Tourgee denied 
that it was true as because Churr is so obviously a 
picture of himself. Sentiment, mystery, coincidence, 
and absurdly impossible character somersaults appear 
in the customary abundance throughout the tale. The 
"Syllabus Personarum" in the preface makes far more 
entertaining reading than the story itself, which as 
usual is devoid of humor and contains, like most novels 
of its type, a sentimental sop for the public at the end, 
for virtue is rewarded and vice punished with the most 
exasperating mechanical inevitability. 

During this time Tourgee was a man of affairs as 
well as a novelist. After the stay in New York in the 
autumn of 1879, where he was writing, consulting with 
his publishers, and doubtless very happy in the thought 
of the fame that would be his when "One of the Fools" 
should reveal himself to an expectant public, he de- 
parted to a new field. Although his bank account was 
rapidly swelling to a size far greater than ever pre- 
viously, he had been looking about for some occupation 
more certain of steady financial reward than literature. 
After refusing an offer to enter a prominent law firm 
in New York, he decided to make a second migration 
to a far country. This time it was the swiftly expand- 
ing West that attracted him, and some time during 
December the Tourgee family left for Denver. 

Arriving there, he at once sought an opening in his 
chosen profession, but none was available. An offer 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 73 

was at once made him, however, by the publisher of 
The Denver Times to assume the editorial manage- 
ment of the evening edition. Since this appeared to 
be fairly satisfactory, Tourgee accepted, meanwhile 
keeping an eye open for an opportunity to practise law. 
But he was not destined to remain in Denver long, 
either as a newspaperman or as a lawyer, for early in 
1880 his publishers wrote a letter importuning him to 
come East and supervise a new edition of "A Fool's 
Errand." This he did, and again went to Denver to 
continue his journalistic work. But before many 
weeks he received a most urgent request from his pub- 
lishers to write another book in the same vein as "A 
Fool's Errand." He at first refused to do this, because, 
as has already been noted, he thought it would be 
merely a repetition of the former book and might there- 
fore fail. But finally he sent his publishers eight or 
ten chapters of "B ricks without Straw," another story 
that had been begun in the South. The publishers 
found the chapters satisfactory and he began to< finish 
the story in Denver, but for some reason was unable 
to write effectively, and so started East again, probably 
in May, in search of inspiration. He was in Canada 
for a short time, hoping to feel there a mood for writ- 
ing, and incidentally seeking the British copyright for 
the forthcoming story. By the middle of July he tele- 
graphed his wife, requesting her to close up his busi- 
ness affairs in Denver and come East. Thus ended the 
brief Western experience, and for the next six months 
their home was in New York where he rapidly finished 
the new novel, of which the first edition of twenty-five 



74 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

thousand copies appeared in the first week of October, 
with "By the Author of A Fool's Errand" in a con- 
spicuous place on the outside cover. 

The book took its title from Exodus 5, 18: "Go 
therefore now, and work ; for there shall no straw be 
given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks." In 
this book, fifth in point of time in the series of Re- 
construction novels, "some aspects of the present con- 
dition of the colored race (1880) and their relations 
to the whites in the great matters of Labor and Educa- 
tion afford still another point of view, and present 
still new types of character and romantic interest," as 
the preface to "A Royal Gentleman" states. Despite 
this claim for novelty, there is really little in the book 
that had not already been presented in preceding tales ; 
for Yankee school teachers, idealized negroes, and 
theories of national education had already character- 
ized previous works. It does differ from "Figs and 
Thistles" and "A Fool's Errand," however, in that it 
has less of an autobiographical nature; for the hero, 
Hesden Le Moyne, is a Southern man with accompany- 
ing prejudices. His French ancestry is significant, 
however, and he had voted in favor of the new State 
Constitution of 1868; moreover, he is finally converted 
entirely to the Northern point of view, both by his 
wife, a New England school mistress who had become 
a "carpet-bagger" teacher, and by his own observations 
of the injustice done to the negro through the short- 
sighted Reconstruction policy. Furthermore, he be- 
comes Tourgee's mouthpiece in the closing chapters, 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 75 

where for the first time education is not only advanced 
as the sovereign remedy for the solution of Recon- 
struction problems, but a specific method is offered to 
attain this end : a fund of money for educational pur- 
poses is to be distributed by the government in propor- 
tion to the illiteracy of different communities ; in other 
words, national supervision of state schools is ad- 
vocated. 

In other respects, however, the story is largely a 
repetition of previous books, with its convenient dis- 
regard of most of the laws of probability (as evinced 
by several miraculous coincidences), its stirring scenes 
of Ku Klux Klan depredations, its element of mystery 
with an accompanying inept solution, its pathetically 
conventional romanticism, its legal and economic dis- 
cussions, and its strong denunciations of Southern 
civilization and Northern inability to face facts. Both 
its strength and weakness are sufficiently pointed out 
in the Dial, which said that the Northern women who 
went South probably "did not as a usual thing enter 
on their lonely and perilous task at the childish age of 
seventeen; and did not invariably become at once the 
daring riders of glossy steeds, each endowed with the 
strength and speed of a locomotive, the tricks of a 
circus-mule, and the intelligence, docility and affection- 
ateness of a sheep-dog. The strength of the book lies 
in its true-seeming portraiture of the lower order of 
characters; its rapid and thrillingly graphic narration 
of incidents both terrible and grotesque; and its tear- 
compelling descriptions of the sufferings of a hapless 



;6 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

and helpless race of beings." * Two weeks after the 
book was placed on sale, the publishers found it neces- 
sary to make a duplicate set of plates to keep up with 
the demand. Their report to Tourgee on December 
31, 1880, states that 41,459 copies had already been 
sold, which shows that its sale had even exceeded that 
of "A Fool's Errand" for a period of similar length. 

During this time, other matters than literature were 
engaging Tourgee' s attention. He could never resist 
the temptation to engage in political strife, and op- 
portunity was afforded him in the summer of 1880 to 
take part in the presidential campaign which eventually 
resulted in the election of Garfield. It so happened 
that Tourgee had been acquainted with him as a boy, 
for, when Tourgee was about ten years old, he had 
visited some relatives in Chester, Ohio, and one of the 
boarders in the family was the youthful Garfield. The 
future president showed his interest in young Tourgee 
by inviting him to the seminary in Chester, where the 
two sang from the same song book during chapel 
exercises ; and some fishing trips taken together at this 
time resulted in a fairly intimate boyhood friendship. 
They had met again in the Civil War, and there re- 
newed their youthful acquaintance for a short time. 

On the journey East, in the summer of 1880, 
Tourgee had stopped off at the Chicago Convention 
and once more met Garfield, who had read and en- 
joyed "A Fool's Errand," and was aware that the book 
would probably have, as it actually did, a considerable 
amount of influence in the campaign of 1880, by plac- 
* x Dial, October, 1880, pp. 110-112. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 77 

ing Reconstruction problems before the public in a 
popular form. 1 Hence it was not surprising that, 
after being nominated for the presidency, Garfield 
wrote Tourgee asking him to assist in the coming cam- 
paign. He eagerly accepted the invitation, and that 
he labored regularly at haranguing crowds in different 
parts of the country is shown by various speeches 
which still remain in manuscript form, and also by the 
fact that he almost entirely lost his voice shortly before 
the election. After Garfield had triumphed at the 
polls, Tourgee sent this telegram: "The family of 
fools send greeting." To it Garfield replied in a letter : 
"Dear Judge : I thank you for your kind greeting from 
the 'Family of Fools,' and in return express the hope 
that the day may come when our country will be a 
paradise for all such fools," Furthermore, a few 
weeks after his election, Garfield wrote Tourgee asking 
his opinion as to what effect the election would have 
on the "solid South," to which Tourgee replied that 
the result would be very good provided the Republican 
Party would put into effect a system of national educa r 
tion. In this letter Tourgee also says that even as 
early as 1870 he had begun to try to get the Republican 
Party interested in national education, and had per- 
sisted in this attempt up to the present time. In the 
following June, Garfield summoned Tourgee to Wash- 
ington for a conference on the matter of educational 
1 "The Bystander is perhaps the only private citizen to whom 
a Republican President ever wrote, 'But for the publication of 
your work I do not think my election would have been possible.' ' 
"A Bystander's Notes," The Chicago Inter Ocean, January 29, 
1892. 



78 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

methods. After a two hours' conversation about this 
matter, Garfield said: "You are right. There is no 
other way. We must begin — at the beginning. Write 
out your views of what is possible to be done and let 
me have them — or, better still, put them into a book 
and I will study it. Of course I must find my own 
way in this matter, but you can help me. No one else 
has studied the subject in the same way or from the 
same standpoint that you have occupied. . . . You 
must help me in this matter." 1 Tourgee promised to 
write the book and did so in "An Appeal to Caesar" ; 
but several years before it appeared, Garfield was only 
a memory. 

Lectures, the dramatization of "A Fool's Errand," 
and a controversy over that book, occupied the winter 
of 1880-1. Tourgee spent most of this period in 
Philadelphia at the home of his life-long friends, both 
of whom he had known as a boy, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph 
Warner. To the list of lectures given in his Southern 
readings, at least two more titles were now added: 
"Give Us a Rest" and "How to Boss the Bosses." He 
usually started to read his lectures; but as he warmed 
to his subject, the printed pages were often thrown 
aside and the topic was finished extempore. 

It was, however, the dramatization of "A Fool's 
Errand," in collaboration with Steele Mackaye, that 
took most of Tourgee' s time during this winter and 
the coming summer as well. The slight success that 
an unauthorized dramatization had made in the West, 
had caused him to give notice that prosecution would 
*"An Appeal to Caesar," p. 17. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 79 

follow any more like attempts, and had also very 
probably given him the idea of making an authorized 
version. The business contract, drawn up between 
Tourgee and Mackaye on June 11, 1881, states that 
the plot of the play was made in unison; Tourgee 
wrote the first dramatic version, and Mackaye then 
made such changes in construction as his experience 
as a dramatist warranted. In matters of structure, 
Mackaye's judgment was final; in matters of fact re- 
garding the South and related subjects, Tourgee's 
opinion was likewise unquestioned. Proceeds result- 
ing from royalties were to be equally divided. The 
proceeds were, however, unfortunately very slim, for 
on its first appearance in Philadelphia in the end of 
October, 1881, the play was hissed and lasted less 
than two weeks. The story of the dramatic version 
was practically the same as that of the book, except" 
that Servosse was still alive at the end of the play. It 
contained four acts of one scene each, except the third 
act which had three scenes, and each act closed with a 
"curtain thriller." Scenes of Ku Klux outrages usurped 
the greater part of the plot, with a corresponding lack 
of humor and emotional relief. The play's failure 
was thus about as complete as any orthodox South- 
erner could have wished. 

Near the first of January, 1881, there appeared "A 
Reply to A Fool's Errand by One of the Fools," 1 
written by Wm. L. Royal, a Southerner by birth, who 
had fought for the Confederacy and then studied law 
in Richmond before joining the New York Bar. The 
l J. E. Hale & Son, 1881, New York. 



80 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

general tone of this work is sufficiently indicated by the 
following passage, taken from the preface: "I look 
upon the book to which I have attempted to reply as a 
willful, deliberate, and malicious libel upon a noble 
and generous people. ... I look upon its author as 
one of the most contemptible fellows of those who have 
libeled that people, and not at all less contemptible 
because highly endowed with intellect." After paying 
his respects to the cleverness and popularity of the 
book, Royal bitterly castigates Tourgee for his repre- 
sentation of the negro dialect, his claim that nearly all 
Southern people hated the North as much as they 
hated the negro, and charges him with being partner in 
an affair involving financial dishonesty. The author 
of this piece of mordant vituperation excelled Tour- 
gee himself in the ability to make unqualified state- 
ments of whimsical beliefs. Tourgee replied to this 
book in the New York Tribune, January 31, 1881, in 
a four-column letter, in which he endeavored to refute 
one of Royal's claims, to the effect that the chaotic state 
of the South was due largely to the presence of nu- 
merous carpet-baggers. Royal then had a new edition 
of his book printed, containing a "Reply" to Tourgee' s 
"Reply," in which a not very convincing attempt was 
made to show that Tourgee had juggled figures in giv- 
ing statistics, and in which also the ancient argument 
was advanced that the teachings of revealed religion 
show that the negro is inferior to the white. The 
"Reply" closes with this Parthian shot: "Upon the 
whole, I desire to say that when Mr. Tourgee under- 
takes to write history, he establishes his right to the 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 81 

place that his ardent admirers claim for him — to wit, 
that of the greatest author of fiction of the day." The 
Tribune for March 15, 1881, characterizes Royal's 
book by saying that the author "is satisfied with pro- 
nouncing the statements of Judge Tourgee 'as false as 
hell' — a mode of reasoning which can hardly be called 
conclusive." The book is then of little value, because 
the writer's prejudices were much greater than those of 
Tourgee ; it is cited here merely because it is the chief 
specimen 1 of a number of attacks made upon the 
tenets which "A Fool's Errand" had so doughtily ad- 
vanced. 

Public approbation of Tourgee's literary work was 
shown in March of this year by a friendly dinner 
given him in New York by the Union League Club. 
The speakers who toasted him included, among others, 
John Jay and Joseph H. Choate. In response to their 
toasts, Tourgee told of an interview which he had had 
with President Grant, in which he [Tourgee] had sug- 
gested education as the best remedy for Southern con- 
ditions; but, having failed in his direct attempts to in- 
fluence legislation, he had turned to the novel as the 
best means of effecting his idea of reform. 

In the spring of 1881, while on a lecture trip in 
western New York, Tourgee saw in a Buffalo paper 
an advertisement offering for sale a large house and 

1 Another specimen is "Not a Fool's Errand," by Rev. J. H. 
Ingraham, G. W. Carleton & Co., New York, 1880, a collection of 
letters describing the peripatetic adventures of a Northern gov- 
erness in the South. She becomes converted to the South- 
erners' point of view; therefore her sojourn in that region is 
"not a fool's errand." 



82 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

some thirty-five acres of land at Mayville, New York, 
a village containing hardly one thousand people, the 
county seat of Chautauqua County, and situated on the 
northern end of Chautauqua Lake, only three miles 
from the parent Chautauqua Institution. He at once 
journeyed to the place, and liked it so well that before 
long Mrs. Tourgee was taken there for her opinion of 
it as a future permanent home. She was charmed with 
the spot, and the place, was soon purchased with a part 
of the $60,000 which Tourgee had in the bank at that 
time, the proceeds of the three novels published during 
the last two years. The house, a fine, large mansion 
built and formerly owned by one member of the 
"Tweed Ring," needed some remodeling; but by June 
1, 1 88 1, the Mayville Sentinel could print this notice in 
the local news item: "Judge A. W. Tourgee and 
family are now located among the residents of May- 
ville, they having arrived yesterday." Tourgee made 
his wife a present of the place, and she at once aptly 
dubbed it "Thorheim." 

Several reasons had influenced the Tourgees in tak- 
ing up their residence in this new locality. They both 
loved country life, and Tourgee was inordinately fond 
of fishing, for which the lake, less than half a mile 
from his home, offered abundant opportunity. The 
fact that the locality was strongly Republican also ap- 
pealed to him, for the taste which he had already had 
of public life had given him a hankering after more 
of it; a desire which was destined never to be very well 
satisfied. For the next sixteen years this place was his 
permanent home; and it is of course obvious that dur- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 83 

ing this time "Judge Torjay," as his neighbors called 
him, was the leading citizen of the sleepy little hamlet, 
and the recipient of many local honors. For most 
of the time during the next three years, however, the 
Tourgees were in Philadelphia engaged in a journalis- 
tic venture of no little magnitude. 



CHAPTER IV 
"OUR CONTINENT" 

The first number of Our Continent, which was pub- 
lished at Chestnut and Eleventh Streets, Philadelphia, 
appeared February 15, 1882. This newcomer in jour- 
nalistic fields was started by what was virtually a 
partnership between Tourgee and Robert S. Davis; 
Tourgee was general editor and Davis furnished the 
major part of the necessary funds. This magazine 
was, according to Tourgee, "the first serious attempt 
ever made to put into a weekly the attractions and ex- 
cellences of our great monthlies." * It proclaimed its 
general purpose thus : "This journal is not, however, 
intended to be the vehicle of any peculiar ideas. It 
may very probably call a spade a spade, and may even 
shy a brick at an especially obtrusive head now and 
then, but as a rule its politics will be non-partisan as 
its religion will be non-sectarian." 2 That it was pre- 
vailingly Republican in its politics, however, need 
hardly be mentioned. It was indeed as large as the 
average monthly periodical, and contained the usual 
popular features characteristic of such productions: 

1 Vol. II, p. 477. 
3 Vol. I, p. 72. 

84 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 85 

short stories, serial stories, "Notes and Queries/' "Lit- 
erary Notes," "The Household," "Science," "Jot- 
tings," "Notes on Dress," "In Lighter Vein," "Home 
Horticulture," articles of general interest, and so forth. 
Thus it attempted to "lay before our readers from 
week to week the best thought of our best writers, il- 
lustrated by the best work of our best artists, and 
clothed in the most befitting garb that the highest me- 
chanical skill can devise." x The art department was 
managed by Donald G. Mitchell; and other writers of 
prominence, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, made 
contributions. The magazine sold for ten cents a copy 
and four dollars a year. 

A large part of its material was of course contributed 
by Tourgee. Again and again in its pages he assever- 
ated that he willingly took all responsibility for what- 
ever appeared in it, and as usual preened himself on the 
fact that he was outspoken, fearless and independent. 
Much of his literary work consisted in the grinding of 
old axes: discussions of the South, innumerable de- 
fenses of the negro, and the advocacy of Republican 
principles, as well as attacks upon the Republican party 
for its failure to effect legislation leading to national 
education. In 1884 he strongly advocated the nomina- 
tion of Robert Lincoln as Republican candidate for 
president, but finally acquiesced with a show of good 
grace in the nomination of Blaine. In addition, he 
wrote many articles of a purely popular nature, such 
as, the value of home life, proper training for rich 
men's sons, the necessity for all to take part in politics, 

* Vol. I, p. 8. 



86 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

warnings against the excessive use of tobacco and alco- 
hol, attacks on the Mormons, criticisms of various au- 
thors, the part of the church in social service — and so 
on, in an endless variety that still had unity in the fact 
that these effusions were all largely cant, after the 
manner of most popular magazines. 

One work of real importance by Tourgee first ap- 
peared in the pages of Our Continent. This was "Hot 
Plowshares," last in the series of six Reconstruction 
novels, though first in chronological order, for the 
story closes when the Civil War had just begun. This 
novel was started in July, 1882, and ran, with occa- 
sional lapses, until May, 1883, in the spring of which 
year it also appeared in book form, published, as all 
the others had been, by Fords, Howard and Hulbert. 
It was composed amid hard conditions. "This story 
from the first has been written under the most difficult 
and peculiar circumstances. It had just been com- 
menced when it became necessary for the writer to as- 
sume the entire control and management of the Con- 
tinent, both editorially and as a publisher." 1 Nervous- 
ness caused by summer heat acting upon his old wound 
and a temporary spell of eye-trouble had also hindered 
the composition of the tale. As the preface to the pub- 
lished volume states, it was "designed to give a review 
of the Anti-Slavery struggle by tracing its growth and 
the influences of the sentiment upon contrasted char- 
acters." Thus it discusses, with the usual combination 
of fictitious and historical elements, the growth of the 
Abolition movement in the North, and the Fugitive 
^ol. II, p. 571. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 87 

Slave Law, with its attendant, the "Underground 
Railroad." The main events take place in a small vil- 
lage in central New York. 

The story gets its title from the fact that the heroine, 
Hilda Hargrove, is supposed to have a taint of African 
blood in her veins, and is therefore obliged to undergo 
the ordeal of public contempt; but, as might be ex- 
pected, she is eventually proved to be of pure Caucas- 
ian blood, through the efficacy of concealed documents 
luckily found, by a crazed woman, in a secret drawer. 
Because of this lucky find, the "hot plowshares** 
Hilda "had been called upon to tread'* prove harmless 
and she triumphantly marries the hero. He is Martin 
Kortright, son of the farmer, Harrison Kortright; the 
parent eventually becomes wealthy through the con- 
struction and successful operation of factories — doubt- 
less another literary echo of Tourgee's experiment 
with the handle factory. Harrison Kortright is the 
best picture of Valentine Tourgee ever drawn by his 
son, and the conversation in the opening chapter be- 
tween the Kortright father and son had actually taken 
place between Valentine Tourgee and his strong- 
willed boy. In other respects the hero resembles Tour- 
gee only in that he is a lawyer and officer in the Union 
cause. The mystery of Hilda's birth furnishes the 
chief interest in the narrative, which is also enlivened 
by stirring pictures of a runaway sleigh, the destruc- 
tion of the mills by fire, and the attempted abduction 
of Hilda. The artificialities of plot which have been 
noted in preceding tales appear here in wonted abun- 
dance. Repetition of the elements common to most of 



88 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

the five earlier novels — contrasts between the civiliza- 
tion of the North and the South, categorical lists of 
the motives which bring about certain episodes of the 
action, as well as eulogies of Lincoln and John Brown 
— abound in the story, which is perhaps the weakest in 
the series of Reconstruction novels, with the exception 
of "John Eax." The fact that it was written primarily 
for serial publication intensified the tendency, already 
strong in Tourgee, of closing many chapters with the 
thrill that the "to-be-continued-in-our-next" story usu- 
ally strives to arouse for financial reasons. 

Mrs. Tourgee's diary, May 17, 1882, reads as fol- 
lows : "At Albion's request, I write that his prediction 
is that one year from today he will have $100,000 in 
the bank, outside of his property and Thorheim, and 
if this prediction is fulfilled, he will go to Europe and 
stay a year." But the prophecy was not fulfilled, for 
in spite of repeated assertions that Our Continent was 
a success, it soon became evident that trouble was in 
the air. Davis had become frightened at the possi- 
bility of failure, and transferred all his interests in 
the publication to Tourgee for $10,000 long before 
even one volume was completed. 

Mrs. Tourgee worked in the office every day far 
more regularly than Tourgee himself, but even her 
great industry could by no means counterbalance the 
lack of business instincts in her strongly opinionated 
husband. By January 15, 1883, she was constrained 
to record in her diary this blunt fact : "Blue day in the 
office for the Judge," and this expression was often re- 
peated in the months that followed. In July of this 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 89 

year Tourgee wrote to James Gordon Bennett, request- 
ing him to help back up Our Continent with his capital, 
but no aid came from that source. 

In the following October a removal was made to 
23 Park Row, New York, though the Philadelphia of- 
fice was retained. The change was deemed expedient 
because of the greater business opportunities of New 
York, and also because the chief persons who had of- 
fered financial assistance in Philadelphia had been a 
liquor dealer, an infidel, and two Democrats; it would 
have been gall and wormwood for Tourgee to accept 
aid from any of this quartet. Aid from the liquor 
dealer was quite certainly refused, for Tourgee would 
not take liquor advertisements in Our Continent at any 
price. The new situation did not, however, help mat- 
ters much. Things still went from bad to worse, and 
by July, 1884, Tourgee' s sworn statement reveals that 
the average monthly receipts from subscriptions were 
only $1425. At the beginning of this year, he used the 
device, so often employed by struggling periodicals, of 
offering prizes for the best short stories as a means of 
arousing the flagging public interest, as well as prizes 
for those who secured the greatest number of subscrip- 
tions for the magazine; and these prizes in many cases 
were his own novels. But all efforts to keep the publi- 
cation going were vain, and on August 20, 1884, it 
made its final appearance. This last number, how- 
ever, contained no mention of the fact that it was the 
magazine's swan song. 

The details of its demise are not very clear, for 
Mrs. Tourgee stopped keeping her diary through this 



9 o ALBION W. TOURGEE 

troublesome period, or else destroyed it, and few au- 
thentic records have been found. But there are several 
references in the diary for 1885 which show that the 
latter part of 1884 was largely taken up in nerve-rack- 
ing legal matters connected with the financial affairs of 
the publication. It had had a capital of $150,000 com- 
posed of shares of fifty dollars each, and no less a 
person than Ulysses S. Grant had $1000 worth of these 
shares. This is shown by his letter of July 30, 1884, 
in which he asked Tourgee to return the principal and 
accumulated interest, since, because of recent misfor- 
tunes, one thousand dollars now meant much to him. 
Tourgee replied, stating the facts about the financial 
condition of the magazine; and on October 16, Grant 
answered, saying that he was unaware of these facts, 
begged pardon for asking the return of the money, and 
requested Tourgee not to give himself another thought 
about the matter. Tourgee has briefly summed up his 
experiences with Our Continent in this excerpt from 
one of his letters : "A very rich man induced me in 
1 88 1 to engage with him in publishing the Continent 
magazine. When his extravagance and pretense had 
swamped what ought to have been a success, he dug 
out and I very foolishly undertook to resuscitate the 
corpse. Had I been brave enough to cut expenses 
down to bed-rock, I should have succeeded. But I 
was not. ... It was a bad break — took everything and 
a lot more." This was literally true, for the $60,000 re- 
ceived from his books was gone, Thorheim and even 
the future sale of the books themselves had been 
mortgaged, and debts still remained. Tourgee went to 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 91 

stay with a cousin of his in Grimsby, Canada, for some 
time in the autumn of 1884, trying to collect his ener- 
gies to face the consequences of this most disastrous 
of all the blows that had thus far struck him. Mean- 
while his wife remained in New York, settling the 
business affairs of the publication, and at the close of 
the year they both returned to Thorheim. This ex- 
perience unquestionably made Tourgee a sadder, as 
well as poorer, man; but it unfortunately did not make 
him an appreciably wiser one. 



CHAPTER V 

THORHEIM 

The next twelve years of Tourgee's life (1885- 
1897) were spent wholly at Thorheim, save for scores 
of trips made all over the United States, but particu- 
larly in the eastern part, to fill lecture engagements. 
On the whole it was a very disheartening time, marked 
by steadily waning literary powers, with an accom- 
panying diminution of sales for the products of his 
pen, and hence a regular lessening of income. During 
the last half of this period, Tourgee was little more 
than a hack writer, using whatever skill he had on any 
sort of writing that offered hopes of publication; and 
only too often did his manuscripts go on more than 
one journey only to return accompanied by the usual 
rejection notice, while many of them never appeared 
in print at all. Many articles which, after several trips 
to and fro, finally obtained publication, might better 
never have been printed so far as his reputation is 
concerned. 

The best record of his activities during this time is 
contained in his wife's diary. The perusal of this fairly 
systematic record of his life from 1881 till his death 
makes it plainly evident that she was the nobler soul. 

92 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 93 

Hardly once did she fail through these years of trial 
and continual disappointment to be his constant in- 
spiration ; while, in a more practical sense, it was largely 
due to her untiring energy, despite frequent attacks of 
illness which often overcame her, that Tourgee's liter- 
ary and business ventures attained what small success 
they did. Without her assistance in the office as aman- 
uensis, proof-reader and general business manager, 
their financial condition would have been much worse, 
and the retention of Thorheim, the maintenance of 
which cost no little sum on account of its large size, 
would have been impossible. Besides this constant fear 
of financial ruin, she had to bear with the many ir- 
ritable traits of her husband. His headstrong nature, 
his cocksure confidence in his own opinions, his exces- 
sive love of fishing with the accompanying waste of 
many valuable days, his constant desire to enter the po- 
litical arena — all these well-defined traits of his taxed 
her wifely powers of diplomacy to the uttermost. "Blue 
and discouraged' ' recurs again and again in the diary. 
The following passages, selected from many of a like 
nature, illustrate the constant strain she was forced to 
undergo : 

July 16, 1885. "Albion went fishing, but as usual 
caught nothing; but, as it does him just as much good, 
no one cares." 

October 2, 1885. "Was glad Albion did not get the 
nomination." [This refers to his attempt, which had 
seemed possible of success, to be nominated for State 
Senator.] 

September 30, 1886. "A serious, fruitless talk with 



94 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

Albion. It is useless to hope to influence him. His 
own way is always the right way." 

October 8, 1886. "Albion went this morning fish- 
ing all day and dwindled away all the golden day, 
when honor, which means everything, is at stake." 

May 14, 1887. "Anniversary of our marriage. 
Still in bed and spent a very unhappy day. How the 
sweet dreams vanish as the years go by !" 

June 2, 1887. "A rainy, gloomy day with many sad 
accompaniments. Albion in despair over his work. 
Life does not seem worth the struggle anyhow." 

In spite of the despondency evident in such passages, 
it is nevertheless true that on the whole the Tourgees' 
family life, apart from financial worries, was a happy 
one. "So glad Albion is back," appears frequently in 
the diary, upon occasions when Tourgee returned from 
lecture engagements. The testimony of their close 
friends, as well as that of the diary, indicates that 
there was more domestic felicity at Thorheim than in 
the majority of households. Almost always during 
these years several friends or relatives shared the hos- 
pitality of Thorheim, and birthdays, marriage anni- 
versaries, and other like times were made memorable 
by festive activities. When the cares of the office were 
off his mind, Tourgee was always excellent company, 
whether at the fireside or in the fishing-boat. 

Tourgee's next volume, after the publication of the 
Reconstruction novels, was "An Appeal to Caesar," a 
series of campaign documents written to influence the 
Republican party, symbolized as "Caesar," to put into 
effective legislation his pet project — national educa- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 95 

tion. As noted previously, it was written in fulfillment 
of a promise made to President Garfield, and certain 
parts of it had already appeared in Our Continent. 
It was published in the autumn of 1884, having been 
dictated from a bed of pain that year. This series of 
essays, written in much the same manner as a lawyer's 
argument, deals with Tourgee's "fool's errand," to 
the South and his consequent disenchantment. He at- 
tempts to show, by a long array of arguments and nu- 
merous tables of statistics, that the negro population in 
the South will steadily increase, while the whites will 
decrease ; he discusses other plans that have been pro- 
posed as a remedy for the present intolerable state of 
affairs in the South and shows their inadequacy; and 
he then advocates his own specific nostrum that will, 
according to him, prove an infallible remedy for the 
present ill, a remedy already broadly outlined in "A 
Fool's Errand" and in a more detailed manner in 
"Bricks without Straw," but never before treated at 
such expository and argumentative length. This remedy 
is national education, the funds devoted to this purpose 
to be subject not at all to State control, but "to be dis- 
tributed, on the basis of illiteracy, to the various town- 
ships and school-districts in which free primary schools 
shall have been in active operation for a specified 
period during the time covered by the appropriation, 
and having a specified average attendance^ (p. 319). 
He then proceeds verbally to pummel objections that 
may be raised to his plan. As an inducement to the 
acceptance of his scheme, he holds out the threat of a 
possible future uprising of the blacks against the South 



96 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

unless his method of dealing with the Reconstruction 
problem is employed. 

Tourgee did not argue for his theory in a manner 
calculated to conciliate the South. "The writer knows 
full well that very few of the white men of the South 
believe that this time [when the negro receives his 
rights] can ever come. They think the black man's 
capacity for endurance has been divinely adapted to 
the infinity of their arrogance" (p. 404). The book 
closes with a final chapter urging those who read it to 
bombard their representatives in Congress with letters 
demanding that action be taken to put this educational 
policy into practice. Tourgee had already circulated 
a petition to this effect, which had been signed by some 
thousands of voters (p. 319). 

Northern press comments on the book were as usual 
over-laudatory, for few of them mentioned the plainly 
evident conviction of infallible prophetic powers, and 
the usual animus against all things Southern except 
the negro. The New York Nation spoke of it thus: 
"We wish to do a piece of justice and frankly confess 
that we had a strong prejudice against Judge Tourgee 
as an embittered sufferer from dispelled illusions. . . . 
We read on with a determined intellectual resistance to 
the foreshadowed proposal of national interference in 
State affairs. But when we came to his plan of na- 
tional education, we could not deny its reasonable and 
statesmanlike character." 

This book had been written in every faith that the 
Republican party would triumph at the polls in Novem- 
ber, 1884. But the election of Cleveland put a very 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 97 

different aspect on national affairs. As a result of this 
catastrophe, for such it was in his opinion, Tourgee 
began, in The Chicago Inter-Ocean, sl series of weekly 
articles which ran from December 10, 1884, till two 
weeks past the time of Cleveland's inaugural in the 
following March. They were addressed to "A Man of 
Destiny," signed "Siva," and marked the beginning of 
a relationship with the Inter-Ocean that was almost 
unbroken for the next thirteen years. These weekly 
articles caused so much comment that in March, 1885, 
William Penn Nixon, editor of the Inter-Ocean, had 
them published in book form. The essays are political 
satires addressed personally to Cleveland, much like 
the previous "C" letters in tone, though this later work 
surpasses the earlier in partisan fury, rancorous in- 
vective, and nasty personalities. The following pas- 
sages are the best commentary on the tone of the es- 
says : "Knowing, as you do, how little worthy of note 
your life has been, and how utterly barren your mind 
and character are of all those elements usually ac- 
counted needful to a fit exemplification of our Ameri- 
can life, it must be with some sense of dizziness that 
you find yourself about to be hoisted upon the pinnacle 
of national power as the representative headlight of 
American Statesmanship" (p. 11). "If you are a 
true type of American life, it is high time that we had 
a new ideal" (p 108). "I pity you as I do the snarl- 
ing scavenger of the desert sands, because he is not 
fitted for better things. I pity you standing before 
the world as the exemplar of the American people, as 
I would pity a Lilliputian leper put forward as a rep- 



98 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

resentative and type of the unlettered giants of Brob- 
dingnag. I pity you as an inert instrument of an unholy 
combination of evil purposes — the victim of a party's 
greed for power and of a faction's blood-stained 
strength. I pity you" (p. 109) — but here a stop had 
best be made and "pity," if not indeed a harsher feel- 
ing, be bestowed upon a man who would stoop to such 
indignities, upon a newspaper, partisan though it was, 
that would print them, and upon a portion of the public 
that would read and believe them. There is of course 
some palliation for Tourgee in that he was merely fol- 
lowing in the steps of an innumerable host of political 
muck-rakers. It is perhaps better neither to justify nor 
condemn these ineptitudes too strongly, as well as not 
to take them too seriously; for the absolutely uncon- 
scious naivete of the whole series of papers, in their 
assumption of unfailing wisdom, prophecy, and the 
right to act as dictatory counselor, results in giving 
the reader a refreshingly large amount of amusement. 
The question of the authorship of the papers, as in 
previous anonymous publications of Tourgee, was 
again widely discussed and many suggestions were 
made, including, among others, the names of Roscoe 
Conkling, James G. Blaine, and, impossible though it 
may seem, Ulysses S. Grant. By the first of August 
the sale of the book had netted Tourgee over four 
hundred dollars; but after that there was little de- 
mand for it, possibly because Cleveland's record of 
sturdy, uncompromising efficiency had at least partial- 
ly shown how completely fatuous the chief ideas in 
tiie book had proved to be. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 99 

Still determined to nag Cleveland as much as he 
could, immediately after the "Man of Destiny" series 
had been completed, Tourgee began to bombard the 
Democratic administration in a new set of papers. 
These received the title "The Veteran and His Pipe," 
and ran in the Inter-Ocean from April to September, 
1885. They consist, of dialogues between several Civil 
War veterans, who continually praise the patriotism 
of the country as they knew it in their youth, and as 
unceasingly lament the crass indifference to country 
and to the heroes of the war which they see at the 
present time. Modern apathy to sentiment of all kinds 
versus old-time reverence of it, eulogies of Lincoln 
and Grant, vitriolic onslaughts against the Reconstruc- 
tion policy, as well as against Cleveland's appointments 
and upon him personally because he had not fought for 
the Northern cause, much discussion of Southern mat- 
ters already broached in Tourgee' s novels, and de- 
fenses of himself from the charge that he was unduly 
prejudiced against the South — these are the main topics 
in this new series of papers, whose most noteworthy 
feature is an entire absence of any new ideas. They 
were, however, sufficientl^well received by the public 
to justify Nixon in having them published, probably 
in 1886, and seventeen years later a new edition ap- 
peared. 

On September 26, 1885, the Inter-Ocean began to 
publish another series of articles by Tourgee, entitled 
"Letters to> a Mugwump," signed "Trueman Joyce," 
which appeared every Saturday until the middle of 
November. As the title implies, these letters were 



ioo ALBION W. TOURGEE 

addressed to the "man without a party," and advocated 
that he should align himself with some definite political 
organization, preferably, of course, the Republican 
party. They contain hosts of truisms about the neces- 
sity of political catharsis, and allied topics. For these 
articles, which averaged between two and three 
columns in length, Tourgee received fifty dollars each, 
and this constituted a large part of the $5500 that 
was his total income for the year 1885. This income 
also included some money gained from the sale of a 
little property which he still had in North Carolina. 
He had also some real estate in Kingsville, Ohio, 
whose rental afforded him during his whole life prob- 
ably about enough money to pay for the expenses in- 
curred by his fishing trips. But the bills for this year 
were numerous, and they, including the upkeep of 
Thorheim and the interest on Our Continent debts, 
left no surplus whatever. 

Having found that his tirades against Cleveland 
apparently had pleased a certain cantankerous element 
in the Republican party, Tourgee began a third col- 
lection of articles that bristled with scurrilous utter- 
ances against the president in the Inter-Ocean on 
March 4, 1886, and they ran bi-monthly until eighteen 
numbers had appeared. This time the title chosen was 
"A Child of Luck," and the signature was again 
"Siva." The only remarkable thing in this third dia- 
tribe against Democrats generally and Cleveland very 
particularly, is the astonishing amount of ingenuity 
displayed in saying nothing new or of any special 
value in an innumerable variety of ways. There is 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 101 

again evident the same debonair, patronizing, cheaply 
familiar, uncle-to-nephew tone that had characterized 
the first two series. Since these three sets of papers 
were entirely too innocuous to cause Cleveland to pay 
the least attention to them (except that he may have 
remarked that the "writer is probably some government 
Diogenes, who is afraid I will deprive him of his tub 
or will stand in his sunshine" 1 ), there is no need to 
make any further comment on them. Comment might 
better be made on the fact that in 1886 Tourgee's lec- 
tures were going very badly, for popular interest in 
them was decreasing, as Mrs. Tourgee's diary plainly 
shows. Whereas he had usually received $100 per lec- 
ture, there is a record of one which he was now glad 
to deliver for thirty-five dollars; and at this time the 
family bills were allowed to run until they were several 
months overdue. 

The year 1887 was marked by the publication of 
two more novels, in which for the first time Southern 
questions do not hold the place of chief interest, though 
echoes of them appear in the first one published, which 
was "Black Ice." Mrs. Tourgee's diary for January 
8, 1885, states that "Albion today wrote the first in- 
stallment of 'Black Ice'," and on May 16, 1887, "Sent 
ms, of 'Black Ice' to Fords, Howard and Hulbert," 
by which company it was shortly published. Tourgee 
needed the aid of his physician while writing this tale, 
as the dedication and preface show, as well as this 
passage from the diary, April 8, 1885 : "Looked over 
what Albion had written of 'Black Ice' and find many 
*"A Man of Destiny," p. 139. 



102 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

alterations necessary, which it pains me to call his 
attention to but it must be done." The book was thus 
written in a time of great physical pain, caused largely 
by Tourgee's old wound and attacks of neuralgia to 
which he was very susceptible, and one wishes that his 
ill health might account for the fact that most of the 
weaknesses which appeared in his earlier works are 
found here even more prominently; but unfortunately 
Tourgee himself said that the story was written with 
the deliberate intention of justifying the theory that 
he held in regard to all fiction — that the only true 
romance is that which is built up on those rare oc- 
currences which are the result of a series of coin- 
cidences, and that pure realism is always to be avoided, 
save in historical matters. 

Hence the plot of this tale is even more bizarre than 
any of those which preceded it. The chief figure is 
Percival Reynolds, a middle-aged mining and civil en- 
gineer, who, with his wife and daughter, lives in a 
pleasant country village apparently somewhere in New 
York. There can be little question that the village is 
really a picture of Mayville; the lake, whose "black 
ice" gives the story its title, Chautauqua; the house, 
described with so much care, Thorheim ; the Reynolds 
family, the Tourgees; the benevolent old physician, 
the family doctor to whom the book is dedicated, Dr. 
William Chace; and the span of horses, those that 
Tourgee was taking so much pride in at that time. 
Furthermore, the reader is told that two of the 
characters in the novel were married at Columbus, 
Ohio, on May 14, by the Reverend Julius E. Gardner, 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 103 

which is precisely autobiographical. The first few 
chapters present a really pleasant picture of domestic 
tranquillity in the small village, and one only desires 
that Tourgee might have written the whole book thus ; 
but, true to his theory, he soon converts what might 
have been a rather charming picture of village life into 
a hodge-podge of mystery, suspense, fortuitous com- 
binations of events, horror, and crime. The titles of 
several chapters will sufficiently point out the general 
structure of the tale: "The Breaking of the Seal"; 
"Some Raveled Threads" ; "The End of the Chase" ; 
"A Midnight Horror" ; and "In the Pale Moonlight. " 
The following passage, taken from the chapter called 
"A Midnight Horror," shows how well Tourgee had 
mastered the art of conventional melodrama : 

"My heart was in my throat as I peered forward at 
the roadway with unnecessary care. A rustle in the 
hemlocks by the roadside startled me as if it had been 
a thing of terror. I pulled the reins and stopped the 
surprised horses at the very steepest part of the 
declivity. As I did so a shriek, clear and shrill, rang 
out of the unseen space beyond, and echoed and re- 
echoed across the river. 

" 'My God!' I exclaimed, 'that is a cry for help!' 

"The cry was repeated, shriller, clearer, and un- 
mistakably in a woman's voice." 

This passage illustrates why Tourgee' s novels were 
fairly successful with the public; and very likely an- 
other reason for this success was the justification, dwelt 
upon particularly in this story, of coincidence as op- 
posed to the regularity of nature. " 'Such things are 



104 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

"happening" every day. Some call them the result of 
chance. ... I may be a fool, but such things, which 
seem against Nature, are to me conclusive evidence of 
One that uses and controls Nature. Call it what you 
will, I love to call it God'" (p. 405). The modern 
reader, however, is much more likely to designate this 
theory of his by some such unmetaphysical term as a 
lack of constructive ability, or even sheer mental lazi- 
ness. 

The second book, which had appeared from the 
press of Roberts Brothers, Boston, about the first of 
September, was begun November 22, 1886, and was 
called "Button's Inn." In writing this tale Tourgee 
was particularly interested in Mormonism, which he 
had previously attacked in Our Continent; but he 
was here more concerned in tracing its origin and the 
philosophy of its evolution from the religious life of 
the time. So it happens that "Button's Inn" contains 
about as many disquisitions on religion as Tourgee's 
earlier stories had contained chapters on history and 
social theories. This story, even more definitely than 
the preceding one, has its scenes in the vicinity of 
Thorheim. "Button's Inn," so named for its owner, 
had once been a real inn, standing some five or six 
miles northwest of Mayville on Portage Road — a name 
given because it was first used by the French and 
Indians as the route by which their goods were carried 
between lakes Chautauqua and Erie, the particular 
points of connection being Mayville, Westfield, and 
Barcelona, once a flourishing harbor, now merely a 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 105 

moribund hamlet marked chiefly by some dilapidated 
fishermen's huts and a ramshackle hotel. As in "Black 
Ice," the pastoral part of the story is rather pleasant ; 
but one learns in the very first chapter that the inn 
is haunted, and from that point on the story becomes 
a blend of love scenes, suspense, crime, and discussions 
of Mormonism. The events take place mostly on 
Christmas Eve and Day, 1842, but part of the tale is 
concerned with blood-curdling incidents that happened 
eighteen years earlier. The inn-keeper's son, Jack But- 
ton, is a wild young fellow in his youth, who finally 
commits a murder in self-defense and for love, and 
hence is forced to flee. He becomes a convert to 
Mormonism, and finally returns to his old home, where 
he is unknown until he reveals himself. He is the real 
"hero" of the tale, though the more conventional one 
(that is, the one who marries the inevitable pretty 
girl) is Ozro Evans, son of the woman for love of 
whom Jack Button committed murder. Along with 
the pretty girl, there is bestowed upon Ozro the 
scarcely less inevitable fortune, inherited through his 
father's will, which he increases by means of a com- 
bination of inventive genius and business ability. The 
story is almost wholly a refutation of the prefatory 
statement that accompanies it : "My purpose has been 
faithfully to depict the life which marked the period," 
and instead represents merely another of the countless 
hosts of marriages that have taken place in fiction be- 
tween sentimentality (in this case both of love and 
religion) and Gothic Romance. In this tale, as is 



106 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

usual in Tourgee's novels, the ghost turns out to be 
one of substantial flesh and blood, which has carried 
on its nocturnal activities by means of a trap door. 

The inventive genius of Ozro Evans may possibly 
be an embodiment of an unsuppressed desire on the 
part of Tourgee to win recognition at the patent office. 
During a large part of his life, he spent many hours 
working on mechanical devices of much variety. 
Hundreds of dollars were spent in these efforts, dol- 
lars which would have done far better service had 
they been applied to some of his long-standing debts. 
When he was in the South, he had tried his brain and 
hands on some of the machinery of his handle factory, 
and from that time on he never entirely left off such 
endeavors. Some of his projects were, the making of 
an all-steel harness for horses, iron posts, and new 
brands of wrenches. He obtained one patent at least, 
in January, 1889, for an hydraulic motor, but it did 
not prove to be of any financial value. Even while 
Consul at Bordeaux, he still kept on with various 
schemes of this sort. 

During the following year (1888) two more books 
were published, in the first of which Tourgee returned 
to the South for inspiration. This was "Eighty-Nine," 
or "The Grand Master's Story," which appeared in 
April. The author's name is given as Edgar Henry, 
and Tourgee tries to make anonymity doubly strong 
by having Henry state that he is merely editing his 
friend's life from an "original manuscript." This 
friend is Royal Owen, a Georgian, who resembles the 
usual Tourgee hero in his Huguenot descent, his 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 107 

farmer parent, his study of law, and his love of speedy 
horses. While the book in general is only a repetition 
of oft-repeated theories about the South and contains 
the usual historical and hortatory chapters, Tourgee 
adds two new ideas, for one of which he was plainly 
enough indebted to the Ku Klux Klan organization. 
This is the "Order of the Southern Cross," which 
Owen originates in obedience to the dying injunctions 
of his father that he should help the South in every 
possible way. This order advocates "peaceful revolu- 
tion" rather than the actively hostile methods of the 
Ku Kluxers. Its members are pledged not to take up 
arms, but by legal means to prevent negroes from 
attaining inordinate political power. It is a secret 
society and its members wear white clothes as a dis- 
guise — both Ku Klux ideas. The hero is thus Tourgee's 
conception of the ideal Southern man. Not much is 
said of national education, but its remedial powers 
are implied, and Cleveland is again sharply attacked 
for his failure to put such a policy into law. Tourgee's 
private correspondence shows that the book was also 
intended to be a surreptitious attack on the Standard 
Oil Company, because of its monopolistic practices, 
and this explains the anonymity of the story. One of 
the characters in the tale has lost all his possessions 
and his reputation because he opposed the activities of 
the "Rock Oil Company," which is only another name 
for the company actually existing. The purpose of the 
book, then, was two-fold : it aimed to show that, while 
at present "the South was in the saddle and monopoly 
in the stirrup," as a poster advertising its appearance 



ro8 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

stated, the South could be ejected from this saddle by 
means of the "Order of the Southern Cross," and that 
monopoly could be forced out of the stirrup by the use 
of impartial legal justice. The title was intended to 
indicate what benefit the year 1889 would bestow upon 
the United States, if, before that time, these two 
methods of reform were employed. 

The other book, which probably appeared in July, 
was "Letters to a King," most of which had already 
been published piecemeal in various religious papers. 
The volume is very similar to "Letters to a Mug- 
wump," except that the mugwump is here treated more 
respectfully by being honored with a regal title. The 
letters have the twofold aim of pointing out to the 
"king" (who of course symbolizes the American youth 
who has recently come to voting age) that he has a 
great responsibility, and that he must accordingly be 
intelligent in order to meet its demands. This means, 
as one might surmise, that these letters gave Tourgee 
another chance to indulge in that form of writing in 
which he was so expert — the production of a chain of 
age-worn truisms, which rolled unceasingly from his 
affably condescending and unconsciously tiresome pen. 

Thus far Tourgee had written only sporadic series 
of articles for the Inter-Ocean; but, beginning in May, 
1888, he wrote regular weekly contributions for that 
paper under the caption "A Bystander's Notes," and 
continued to do so with practically no omissions until 
August, 1893. These articles, signed by his own name, 
constituted an enlarged "Migna," the department in 
Our Continent in which he had discussed all sorts of 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 109 

political and social questions in a popular manner. 
"Waving the bloody shirt," education, labor and 
capital, foreign affairs, book reviews, the World's 
Fair, attacks on the Democrats, alternate defenses of 
the Republican party and mild assaults on certain of 
its policies which were opposed to his ideas — such 
subjects as these were discussed by him in "A Bystand- 
er's Notes" many, many times. In 1889 he used a new 
heading, "A Tidewatcher's Thoughts," for part of that 
year, in which he "studied the tide of today's life." 
More and more these articles became propagandistic 
in tone. In October, 1891, he made a public appeal 
in the "Notes" for the formation of a "Citizens' Equal 
Rights Association," which was of course intended for 
the special benefit of the negro. He formed this or- 
ganization because, as one of his letters of this period 
states, he had come to feel that it was impossible to 
influence the North by merely writing and speaking 
for the negro, and had therefore decided to employ 
more business-like means. Tourgee received hundreds 
of letters, mostly from negroes, praising him for this 
idea, and so started the association on its way; but, 
like his other various schemes, it soon ended in failure. 
The publishers of the Inter-Ocean found it necessary 
several times to refuse articles of his which attacked 
certain Republican principles with undue vigor, because 
the paper depended for its success upon political 
patronage. Tourgee also wrote articles for this pub- 
lication on noteworthy occasions, as, for example, on 
the deaths of Henry Ward Beecher and John A. Logan, 
the latter of whom he extolled to the extent of ten 



no ALBION W. TOURGEE 

thousand words. Had all these Inter-Ocean articles 
appeared in book form they would have made some 
eight or ten fat volumes; but this material would have 
been even more ephemeral than much in his actually 
published books. 

"With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys/' which came 
from the press in 1889, had already been published by 
Lippincotts. 1 This book, as the preface states, was 
written to show how much romance there is in the sup- 
posedly matter-of-fact legal profession; it is thus a 
sort of sequel to "Black Ice," in which, it will be re- 
called, the theory was advanced that all life consists 
of romance governed by caprice. It is composed of 
thirteen short tales, each complete in itself, but all 
having the same hero, Gerald de Fontaine, a farmer's 
son, who had begun the study of law as a clerk, but 
who eventually attains eminence in the profession itself. 
The "romance" which is the basis of each story is 
composed of the customary blend of highly improbable 
concurrences, technical legal matter, thrilling crises, 
sentimentality, and prescience on the part of certain 
individuals, the whole resulting in patent artificiality. 
There are several negroes in the tales, but no specific 
discussion of Reconstruction problems. 

For 1890 several events in Tourgee's life are worthy 
of note. He was summoned to Washington in March 
to address the House Committee on Education, which 
he did on the thirteenth of that month. In his address 
he opposed the Blair Educational Bill which was then 
before Congress, and advocated one of his own con- 
1 Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine, Philadelphia, vols. 40-44, inc. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE in 

coction, which formulated the same ideas that had al- 
ready appeared in "An Appeal to Caesar." On the 
twentieth of March he had the satisfaction of seeing, 
from a place in the gallery, the defeat of the Blair 
bill, while on the following day he appeared before the 
Committee on Elections and spoke in favor of a bill 
then pending, which was intended to protect the voter 
without regard to race or color. In April he was 
granted a pension of six dollars a month, including 
the years from 1863 (in which he had renounced his 
pension from patriotic motives) until 1890, and thirty 
dollars a month for the rest of his life. On June 6, 
according to his wife's diary, he "covered himself with 
honor" by delivering a fiery address on the wrongs 
done the negro before the First Mohonk Negro Con- 
ference in Ulster County, New York. During this 
summer, in his Inter-Ocean articles, he advised that 
the Afro-American League, an organization fairly ac- 
tive at that time, should be a secret affair in order that 
it might escape persecution in the South ; and for this 
advice he was roundly attacked by scores of news- 
papers. 

"First bound copies of Tactolus' received," says 
Mrs. Tourgee's diary for March 27, 1890. This is a 
reference to "Pactolus Prime," a book on which 
Tourgee had been busy for over a year. "I do not 
know what it will do, but it is a very strong book, or 
else I am a very silly man," he says, in a letter about 
it. In this story he made use of the popular interest in 
the Blair bill by writing a tale in which this bill was 
attacked, and his old "Appeal to Caesar" remedy 



ii2 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

again recommended. The title of the book is the hero's 
name, and he is a mulatto who, in order to save his 
children (in whom no trace of negro blood appears) 
from the stigma of their birth, hides from them the 
fact that he is their father, and takes a position as 
boot-black at a Washington hotel. Tourgee, as usual 
idealizing the negro almost to the point of apotheosis, 
endows Pactolus with the argumentative ability and 
technical knowledge of a lawyer, and with an uncanny 
prescience of men and affairs. The gentle reader is 
asked to believe that even men high in the nation's 
councils "were not ashamed to consider his warnings" 
(p. 25). Melodrama and mystery often meet to- 
gether in this novel, while gushing sentiment and 
religious piety frequently and fervently kiss bach 
other. Pactolus, from being an unbeliever in the 
"white Christ" who "exists for whites only," finally 
accepts Christianity with an ardor fiery enough to suit 
even the idolizers of E. P. Roe — with whom, incident- 
ally, Tourgee was always on friendly terms. It is 
quite possible that Tourgee may have got from Roe 
hints of the device, so frequently used by that per- 
petrator of several viciously virtuous pieces of fiction, 
of hurling many souls into the hopper of atheism, 
whence they finally emerge, after a severe jostling 
and grinding process, as uniformly orthodox Victorian 
Christians. The publishers' preface to the book refers 
to Pactolus as "the Edipus of American fiction" ; but 
this particular "Edipus," instead of tearing out his 
eyes as a self -punishment, suffers the ignoble fate of 
being mortally injured by a runaway horse. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 113 

Mrs. Tourgee's diary for September 17, 1889, re- 
cords this item : "After a year and a half of thought, 
Albion began today his story. The agony — I can use 
no other word — of decision was intense. He wished 
to do so well — to put so forcibly the truths which have 
weighed upon him so long." This refers to a story 
first called "Nazirema, or The Church of the Golden 
Lilies." Under that title it had appeared in The Ad- 
vance, a humanitarian weekly journal. 1 In November 
or December, 1890, Fords, Howard and Hulbert 
printed it under the new title "Murvale Eastman, 
Christian Socialist." The Kingsleyean title indicates 
the general nature of the book, which is a plea for 
the application of the principles of Christianity to 
modern industrial problems. This doctrine is embodied 
in the person of Murvale Eastman, a "muscular Chris- 
tian," pastor of the Church of the Golden Lilies, who 
is of course a paragon of "body, mind, and spirit" 
perfection. He literally practices what he preaches by 
acting as driver of a horse-car, by which means he pays 
his own expenses and gets in touch with life as well. 
Finally he forms a "League of Christian Socialists," 
which formulates feasible methods of putting into 
practice the theory of the golden rule. There is a re- 
minder of Tourgee's early literary experiments in the 
form of a minister named "God's Anynted Phue," who 
is the same type of person that he had been when 
Tourgee used his name in North Carolina. Secrecy, 
sentiment and crime add their customary zest to the tale 
and, in spite of their absurdity, serve to make readable 
1 The Advance, Chicago, vol. XXXII. 



ii 4 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

what would otherwise be a dry, theological tract. 
Eastman succeeds in converting enough people to his 
socialistic conception of Christianity to satisfy even 
the most egregious demands of those who insist upon 
religious conversions as a necessary concomitant of 
every good novel, somewhat as the healthier-minded 
Elizabethans liked those plays best which ended in a 
general slaughter of the leading characters. The villain 
of the story, Wilton Kishu, richest member in East- 
man's congregation, after indulging in the usual 
amount of emotional acrobatics, is thoroughly cleansed 
of his former nefariousness and becomes a humble 
worshipper of the victorious Eastman. Even the sub- 
stantial quantity of flesh-and-blood mystery, crime and 
sentiment which composes the narrative part of the 
book is not sufficient to conceal the very evident skele- 
ton of propaganda which constitutes its framework. 
One of the members of the firm that published the 
story objected strongly, in a letter to Mrs. Tourgee, 
to the "elaborate disquisitions, which in my opinion 
clog the current of the thought as much as the possible 
current of the sales." This criticism proved to be 
prophetic, for the book was by no means a financial 
success. 

In the spring of 1891, Tourgee, who had been ap- 
pointed Honorary Professor of Legal Ethics in the 
Buffalo Law School at the time of its foundation in 
1887, and had already delivered lectures there during 
the last four years, gave a course of lectures at that 
institution on legal ethics. Since Buffalo was only 
some sixty miles from Thorheim, he found it easy to 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 115 

make the journey to and fro without staying in the 
city over night. He held this position until he went 
to France, and the income thus derived was especially 
welcome during these years, for the sale of his books 
was now steadily approaching the vanishing point. 

The Inter-Ocean, in July, 1891, began a series of 
articles by Tourgee, entitled "John. Workman's No- 
tions," which were popular presentations of topics con- 
cerned with contemporary political economy. John 
Workman professes to be a great friend of the laboring 
classes. He discusses the historical background of his 
subject, and then applies the lessons drawn from this 
study to modern conditions. There can be little doubt 
that Tourgee was mainly indebted to Ruskin for most 
of his ideas on political economy, for he reaches much 
the same conclusions as Ruskin had reached twenty 
years earlier, and advocates many of the same fantastic 
remedies which the great Victorian had already sug- 
gested. All these articles, forty-four in number, were 
written particularly with the intention of giving the 
poor nobler ideas of labor. Tourgee expected to publish 
this series in book form, and even copyrighted a forth- 
coming volume; but it never was printed, probably 
because he decided that the unsatisfactory sale of his 
previous works of a similar nature did not warrant 
any hope that a new volume would meet with any 
better financial success. 

Tourgee went to California on the first day of April, 
1892, and stayed there until the eighth of May, in order 
to recuperate from a combination of ills — the ever 
troublesome spinal wound, nervousness, and general 



n6 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

physical and mental depression. Hardly had he re- 
turned, much refreshed, from this brief respite from 
almost unceasing labor, when he called down scathing 
denunciation upon himself because of a prophecy that 
he had made in an Inter-Ocean article to the effect 
that, unless different governmental methods were used, 
there would be an uprising of the negroes within the 
next ten years that would equal if not exceed the 
French Revolution in terror and bloodshed. Both the 
Northern and Southern press joined in vigorous con- 
demnation of this new Tourgee jeremiad, but he in- 
sisted that the prophecy would come true and used the 
columns of the Inter-Ocean for defending himself in 
his usual intrepid fashion. As late as 1903, in a letter 
to Nixon, he still maintained that such an uprising, 
accompanied with terrible slaughter, was almost in- 
evitable. 

In "A Son of Old Harry," published in 1892, 
Tourgee employed some methods of modern realistic 
fiction which he affected so frequently to despise. The 
story was written to show that no one can escape from 
an evil destiny if fate has so ordained it. Yet, while 
the doctrine of fatalism is the foundation of the tale, 
it contains little compelling power; for Tourgee, in 
the use of coincidence, not only goes beyond Thomas 
Hardy, but also comes very near giving the story a 
conventionally happy conclusion, which would be 
irritating if it were not so patently impossible. In 
other respects the novel is characteristic of the Tourgee 
genre: horses and horse-racing are even more in evi- 
dence than in any of his other tales; the hero, Hubert 



/ 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 117 

Goodwin, becomes a brigadier-general in the Civil 
War; there is much discussion of religious matters; 
melodrama plays its wonted inevitable part ; and senti- 
mentality oozes from almost every page, appearing in 
an "eternal triangle" in this story — a type of emotional 
debauchery, it should thankfully be noted, in which 
Tourgee seldom rioted. The racial problem is broached 
several times, but not to excess. The whole book pre- 
sents a pathetic picture of a mind that was in nearly 
all respects Victorian, floundering in the effort to make 
literary capital of some elementary theories taken from 
the gospel of realism ; a mind that, after giving up this 
vain attempt, returns with manifest relief to the com- 
fortably familiar regions of grotesquely impossible 
romance. 

The Chicago World's Fair called forth Tourgee's 
next volume, written with deliberate intent to make 
money out of that international event. "Out of the 
Sunset Sea/' which appeared early in 1893, recounts 
in the first person the adventures of an Englishman, 
Arthur Lake, who, after divers exciting experiences 
in both love and war, embarks with Columbus on his 
voyage of discovery, and later succumbs to the lust 
for gold that seized so many adventurers at that time. 
This, Tourgee's only experiment in historical romance 
outside of his own country, is in some respects his 
most successful book. He himself thought that it con- 
tained his best writing, and there are good grounds for 
agreeing with this opinion. First of all, it is not a 
novel of purpose, and hence is primarily a story, one 
that abounds in active and swift narration, with no 



n8 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

pauses for pointing the morals that blemish rather than 
adorn most of his tales. Furthermore, his other faults 
are less in evidence here : there is less melodrama than 
is customary, sentiment is kept well under control, and 
piety is fortunately almost completely absent. The 
characters are of course perfectly conventional, the 
hero being the ordinary swash-buckler so common in 
stories of adventure; but after all, in a novel of this 
kind characterization is of secondary importance. An 
almost complete absence of that constant straining for 
effect which is so noticeable in his other stories, results 
in the presence of something that is almost, if not quite, 
charm. In general there is nothing of originality in 
the story, but Tourgee in it did fairly well what many 
have done poorly and only a few excellently. The con- 
versation of the sailors, however, is of a sort that 
certainly never was on land, though possibly it may 
have been on sea. One reason why the story is told 
better than usual is that the plot was here made almost 
ready to hand; for it was in the structure of his plots 
that Tourgee was generally weakest, weaker even than 
in character drawing. Another reason is that the sub- 
ject furnished all the romance necessary without the 
necessity of painfully seeking it. The volume was 
popularized by drawings made by his daughter, Aimee, 
who also illustrated several of his other works. 

One of the books so decorated was "An Outing with 
the Queen of Hearts," which appeared in 1894, and 
is a pleasant pastoral sketch. The "Queen" is Mrs. 
Tourgee, whose unfailing counsel and assistance 
merited a greater reward than this small volume gave. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 119 

But, small as the book is, it shows how deep and 
abiding was the affection of husband and wife, despite 
the temporary vexations that depressing financial 
troubles occasionally caused. This story, as well as 
"Out of the Sunset Sea," has some real charm; a 
charm that is, however, often distinctly impaired by 
bitterly one-sided attacks on modern ideas of love. 
But the glimpses of quiet, undisturbed nature, of 
fishing and exploring, slight as they are, nevertheless 
will probably remain with the reader long after both 
the plots and characters of some of Tourgee's more 
pretentious literary efforts have vanished from the 
mind. 

From this time until the spring of 1895, there is 
little known about Tourgee that is of interest. "A By- 
stander's Notes" had been discontinued by the Inter- 
Ocean in August, 1893, and this suspension caused 
worry that was not alleviated until Tourgee was al- 
lowed, some four months later, to resume the series. 
In January, 1894, a second series of articles on "A 
Man of Destiny," once more by "Siva," was begun and 
continued weekly till the following April. This new 
production was such in name only, for nothing novel 
was added in this last flamboyant fulmination against 
Cleveland. At the end of this year, Tourgee's ac- 
tivities with the Inter-Ocean were ended until he went 
to France, from which place he occasionally sent his 
ideas. His long and fairly regular connection with 
this paper was certainly his most successful financial 
enterprise, for it was the only one that had given 
him a fairly steady income. Visions of political office 



120 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

again haunted him in 1894, and several papers in his 
vicinity advocated his election to Congress; but he 
was opposed by most of the organs even of his own 
party, though one had the temerity to suggest his name 
as vice-presidential candidate for 1896. But the slight 
sentiment in favor of his nomination to Congress soon 
died an even swifter natural death than is ordinary in 
politics, and with its decease all of Tourgee' s hopes for 
popular approval of his political theories flickered out 
forever. 

Still unwilling to learn, or more probably incapable, 
harsh though the word is, of learning from the stern 
teachings of experience, in the spring of 1895 Tourgee 
started another journalistic venture in that optimistic 
frame of mind which he always displayed when be- 
ginning to> chase the ignis fatuus of business success. 
On March 20, there appeared from rooms at 457 
Washington Street, Buffalo, The Basis; A Journal of 
Citizenship, edited by Tourgee. Its front page pro- 
claimed its modest mission to the world in flaring type. 
That mission was to be "The Basis of Public Peace, 
Personal Security, Equal Right, Justice to All, Good 
Laws, Good Government, National Prosperity, Im- 
proved Conditions, AND OF A BETTER WORLD 
TOMORROW." The first editorial states that The 
Basis is a "thirty-two page weekly which hopes to 
grow to forty-eight pages and then to sixty- four if 
the favor of the public will permit." The general idea 
of the publication, as announced, was to promote "ap- 
plied Christianity/' the theory- which had already 
been advanced in "Murvale Eastman"; but it is very 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 121 

plain that a scarcely secondary purpose was to furnish 
a medium for "A Bystander's Notes" and various other 
articles of Tourgee's, together with several by his 
daughter, who signed herself "Henry Churton Jr.," 
which had been rejected by certain magazines. 
"Migna," which had been sleeping in a corner of the 
grave where Our Continent had rested for eleven years, 
was now exhumed and at least partially revivified. The 
history of that unfortunate magazine now began to be 
repeated, and the next year was painfully employed in 
disheartening efforts to make The Basis succeed, at- 
tempts that were hindered by almost constant ill- 
health. As early as July, Tourgee's private corre- 
spondence shows that the magazine was likely to stop 
at any time because of insufficient funds. Efforts to 
merge it with several other publications had failed, 
since the editors were too wary. Tourgee stated that 
he himself, his wife, daughter, and one office girl did 
the whole of the work for the magazine, which had 
only eight hundred subscribers. By December it had 
become necessary to limit the publication to once a 
month, and in April, 1896, the last number came 
forth. 

The rest of this year was spent in the attempt to ob- 
tain publication for articles which almost always were 
rejected, but two small volumes finally found their 
way into print. The first of these, "The War of the 
Standards," is a study in "coin and credit versus coin 
without credit"; in other words, it is a series of cam- 
paign documents. They are largely historical, but 
those at the end discuss certain concrete methods of 



122 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

dealing with the currency problem that was the chief 
issue in the campaign of 1896. Possibly of more in- 
terest, because it is fiction, is "The Mortgage on the 
Hip-Roof House." It is a novelette of the Horatio 
Alger type, in which there are a villain, a poor but 
lovable grandfather, a more lovable granddaughter, 
an adopted grandson (adopted of course that he may 
wed the granddaughter), and a kindly as well as rich 
benefactor. The plot centers about the necessity of 
raising a mortgage on the family home, which is 
situated near Lake Erie. Needless to say, it is raised, 
villainy is properly punished, and poverty-stricken, 
spotless virtue is amply recompensed for its unswerv- 
ing adherence to the straight and narrow path. 

Tourgee went to New York in the autumn of 1896, 
and remained there for several months seeking pub- 
lishers for various articles, as well as an opportunity 
to campaign for McKinley. His letters to his wife 
during this period often threatened suicide unless he 
found some means of sustenance. At last this was ob- 
tained through campaign speeches made for the Re- 
publicans, and thus the tension caused by a really 
desperate financial situation was relieved. After such 
experiences as these, it is no cause for wonder that, 
on December 31, Mrs. Tourgee exclaimed, in the 
privacy of her diary: "The close of the most distress- 
ful year of my life! Pray God the next may be 
different P 

Fortunately it was, for in 1897 Tourgee was ap- 
pointed Consul at Bordeaux. In January he began 
to send letters to the President as well as to various 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 123 

men in Congress in regard to a consulship at Man- 
chester. He received some encouragement in this 
attempt, because of which Mrs. Tourgee went to 
Washington in April and had many personal confer- 
ences with those in authority. As a result of these 
conferences, Bordeaux was finally chosen, since it 
was the most available position. On May 6, President 
McKinley informed Mrs. Tourgee that the appoint- 
ment to Bordeaux was settled, and one week later the 
commission as Consul to that place was granted her 
husband. The next six weeks were occupied in 
settling up business affairs, and on July 3 Tourgee took 
what was to be his final look at his native country, 
and, accompanied by his wife, sailed for France. 



CHAPTER VI 
BORDEAUX 

After a stop at Gibraltar, Tourgee landed on the 
southern coast of France, arrived at Bordeaux on July 
22, and took formal charge of his office on August 2. 
The duties incumbent upon him were not arduous, and, 
had his health been good, there would have been much 
happiness in store for him and his family, for the 
daughter came to Bordeaux shortly after her parents. 
But the next eight years was a time of steadily de- 
clining vigor for Tourgee, broken by periods of ap- 
parently returning strength; not only his old wounds, 
but a complication resulting from them which took 
the form of diabetes, became gradually more malignant. 
And yet it was not on the whole an unhappy period, 
at least in comparison to the preceding six or eight 
years, for his income was now definite and regular. 

In 1898 his old publishers, Fords, Howard and 
Hulbert, brought out a volume of three stories, of 
which the first furnished the title, "The Man Who 
Outlived Himself." In the caption story, Tourgee 
again shows that interest in things supernatural which 
had already been manifested in some of his writings. 
The leading figure in the story purports to have been 

124 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 125 

one of the inmates at Libby prison when Tourgee was 
there, and he entrusts the "strange story" of his life 
to his old fellow-prisoner. The tale, which contains 
occasional gruesome touches and uncanny situations 
that suggest Poe, recounts how one Arthur Quitman 
died while in the midst of financial troubles, came back 
to life, and finally recovered his memory, together 
with his wife and daughter — much of which is sug- 
gestive of autobiography. The second story, "Poor 
Joel Pike,'' is reminiscent of Tourgee' s lawyer days. 
Joel Pike is a Pactolus Prime-like figure who suffers 
under the suspicion of being a villain, whereas he is 
eventually shown to be almost an angel- — albeit a very 
ugly one — in disguise. Autobiography, mystery, 
problems of Reconstruction, love, and a dark, schem- 
ing villain who is finally reformed, equally spoil the 
closing story in the volume, "The Grave of Tante 
Angelique." 

In September of this year, Tourgee's connection 
with the Inter-Ocean, to which he had made regular 
contributions since coming to France, particularly 
patriotic articles dealing with the Spanish- American 
War, was finally severed. Three months later the 
family took up residence for the winter at the Villa 
Trocadero, a pretty spot on the seacoast about fifty 
miles from Bordeaux, whither Tourgee went because 
in it were medical baths which had been prescribed for 
him. The family remained there until April, 1899, 
when, upon their return to Bordeaux, a disagreeable 
incident occurred. On the twelfth of that month, a 
bailiff, with a writ of saisie-gagerie issued by local 



126 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

authorities, entered Tourgee's house and, after 
handling him and his daughter roughly, took an in- 
ventory of the furniture and made insulting remarks 
about the American flag. This action raised the ques- 
tion of the inviolability of consular material, sustained 
by treaty, and accordingly Tourgee immediately sent 
all the facts to the mayor of Bordeaux and to Wash- 
ington. After a good deal of diplomatic corre- 
spondence, the matter was satisfactorily adjusted. 

During the coming summer and until well on in 
1900, Tourgee's health was apparently the best it had 
been for several years, as a result of which he resumed 
writing, mostly about political matters, for several 
magazines. For the next two years his health was 
still such that he was able to do a little literary work 
at various times. One item is of much interest in 
view of the fact that it shows how absolutely at this 
time Tourgee had given up all the educational theories 
which had been the foundation of the Reconstruction 
novels and of much of his other writings. In a letter 
to President Roosevelt, on October 21, 1901, Tourgee 
first congratulates him for the moral courage shown 
in his invitation to Booker T. Washington to dine with 
him, and then says, apropos of the question of national 
education as a remedy for the negro problem : 

"It was a genuine fool's notion. I sincerely believed 
at that time (1880) that education and Christianity 
were infallible solvents of all the evils which have 
resulted from the white man's claim of individual su- 
periority. . . . Today I am ashamed to have been that 
sort of a fool. I realize now that . . . education does 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 127 

not eradicate prejudice, but intensifies it — Christianity 
does not condemn or prevent injustice done to the weak 
by the strong, but encourages and excuses it." 

This letter is clear proof that the rosy visions about 
humanity's betterment which Tourgee had so long en- 
tertained had now entirely faded. The peevish, Timon- 
of -Athens tone (attributable in part perhaps to 
Tourgee's state of health) here manifested is obviously 
enough that which is usually assumed by most would- 
be alleviators of human ills, when their theories, based 
upon the insecure foundations of prejudice, sentiment, 
and the self-satisfaction derived from blind adherence 
to their own plan to the exclusion of all others, have 
been finally proved false by the beneficent corrosion 
of time. 

In this same year was published what was probably 
the last literary effort of much length undertaken by 
Tourgee, and it is an only too painful evidence that 
his fountain of inspiration had not only ceased to spurt 
but almost even to bubble. In the National Tribune, 
Washington, D. C, there appeared weekly during 
March and April, 1901, successive chapters of a novel- 
ette, "The Summerdale B rabble.' ' The action begins 
in Summerdale, Massachusetts, but soon switches to 
Tourgee's old home at Mayville, and local scenery 
thence plays a large part in the story. Hero and 
heroine are both even more extraordinary for wealth, 
good looks, and general personal attainments than had 
been customary in Tourgee's works. The only thing 
which prevents the tale from being an almost perfect 
example of consistently impeccable dulness in plot, 



128 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

character types, and action, is that it contains no real 
reprobate who has the blood-curdling attributes of all 
orthodox bad people. 

The current of life ran smoothly for Tourgee in 
1902, but the next year brought renewed troubles for 
both body and mind. On June 25, 1903, he received 
a message from Washington inquiring whether he 
would like a position as Consul-General at Halifax. 
He at once replied, stating that he much preferred to 
remain at his present post ; but several weeks later an 
official announcement came that he had been appointed 
Consul-General at the newly suggested post. Though 
deeply hurt at what he regarded as a personal rebuff, 
he replied in a quiet letter, maintaining that he could 
not go to Halifax because the rigorous climate there 
would probably be disastrous both to him and his 
weak daughter. In response, he was told that if he 
preferred he could go to Prague or the West Indies, 
but that his successor at Bordeaux had already been 
appointed. This last communication alarmed Mrs. 
Tourgee so much that she dared not show it to her 
husband, but instead wrote a pleading letter to Presi- 
dent Roosevelt. Having waited in vain for a reply, 
she sailed on July 25 for the United States, determined 
to have a personal interview with the President. No 
sooner had she landed in New York than she received 
a cablegram stating that Tourgee was to be permitted 
to remain at Bordeaux ''because of Madam's letter to 
the President." 1 But this affair had a most disquiet- 
ing effect upon her husband, for, in his wife's own 

1 The Buffalo Express, December 12, 1909. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 129 

words, he "never recovered from the shock of this ex- 
perience, and though he lived nearly two years after, 
he was never again his bright, hopeful self." x The 
active cause for this episode was that certain dealers 
in hides in Bordeaux thought that Tourgee was too 
strict in his regulations concerning exportations, and 
accordingly made complaints to the authorities. It 
should be noted that Tourgee was never in his life 
in Halifax, though several abbreviated biographies of 
him state that he was Consul-General there during the 
last years of his life. 

Meanwhile his health was steadily declining, though 
at times he appeared almost well ; and from this period 
on his wife did practically all the business connected 
with his office. A letter of his, dated November 23, 
1904, gives his own estimate of his condition: "My 
health was very bad for several months [1904], but in 
August last the doctors made an excavation in my hip 
and took out a piece of lead which must have been 
wandering around in my anatomy since Perryville. I 
have been much better since. I now weigh 175 and 
feel almost well, except for my hands which are pain- 
fully hypersensitive — making writing a burden which 
has so long been a delight." This letter shows that 
unwarranted hope of recovery which so often charac- 
terizes persons whose course is almost run. Uric acid 
poison was now filling Tourgee's system, and he also 
frequently experienced choking spells caused by water 
on the lungs which had to be drawn off several times. 
On December 30, 1904, Mrs. Tourgee said in her diary, 

l Ibid. 



i30 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

"Began reports which may be for the last time." She 
of course knew that the end could not be far off. Dur- 
ing the spring of 1905, Tourgee was dilirious much 
of the time, and often thought that he was dying, 
though he still sat up as late as April 25. 

Mrs. Tourgee's diary, which had so faithfully 
narrated the events of her husband's life for more 
than twenty-five years, on May 21, 1905, recorded the 
closing scene thus : "The sun shines brightly, but it is 
a dark day for us, Albion breathed his last at 12 115 
this morning. My heart is wrung. I can say no 
more." Two days later funeral services were held in 
the English church at Bordeaux, and the body was im- 
mediately taken to a crematory at Paris. Mrs. Tourgee 
and her daughter spent the next few months in 
settling up the business affairs of the Consulate office, 
and in November returned to Thorheim, bringing with 
them the ashes of the husband and father, which were 
shortly interred in the local cemetery after appropriate 
ceremonies had been conducted by the Grand Army 
of the Republic. A simple granite shaft was soon 
erected over the ashes, which bears the inscription : 

"I pray thee then 
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

In personal appearance, Tourgee was of medium 
height, and, while a young man, was very slim, as a 
photograph taken when he was in the army witnesses. 1 
As he grew older, he increased considerably in weight 
and breadth, and during the last ten or fifteen years 
1 "The Story of a Thousand," p. 209. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 131 

of his life was quite obese — a result not only of age 
but of disease as well. His hair was very dark brown 
and he wore a heavy moustache ; his face was perhaps 
strong rather than handsome, though he was possibly 
better looking than the average man. He unequivocably 
liked at least one custom of the Southerners — their 
style of dress, which he always followed after his re- 
turn North, particularly as regards the wide-brimmed 
hat for which the "Southern colonel" on our stage has 
always been conspicuous. 



CHAPTER VII 

CONCLUSION 

A continually lapsing interest in his novels with 
their already antiquated or largely discredited theories, 
and an unbroken absence of eight years from his native 
land before his death took place, account for the fact 
that there was little critical comment about Tourgee 
or his literary work after his decease. The penalty 
of faint praise or decorous silence thus inflicted upon 
him was that which is usually paid by men of his type : 
opportunists, who make literary capital out of some 
tremendous social convulsion whose surgings are soon 
calmed by legislative measures, or simply by the 
progress of time with its accompanying increase of 
more charitable, because less interested, opinions; 
politicians, whose acrid partisanship, which stains not 
merely their political views but also their opinions on 
nearly all those public and private questions which 
admit of manifold interpretations and solutions, almost 
completely ostracises them from fellowship with those 
who believe that one of the chief glories of literature 
is the possibility it affords for a comity of infinitely 
varied ideas ; writers, whose literary style depends for 

132 



* 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 133 

its effectiveness largely upon the persistent use of 
devices long since hoary with age. And by this time 
it should be evident that Tourgee's works come, with 
almost unbroken regularity, under this three-fold 
classification : they give vent to narrow, cramped ideas; 
they are the products of particular, and therefore 
temporary, social conditions; they lack stylistic dis- 
tinction. 

One subject but little touched upon thus far con- 
cerns Tourgee's opinions about some of the chief 
writers of his day. His views of his contemporaries 
are to be found mostly in Our Continent, but he 
occasionally interpolated them in his novels. It was 
of course a maxim of his literary as well as political 
faith to admire only those writers whose minds ran in 
much the same channels as his own. This means, in 
general, that the Victorians were the objects of his 
adulation. Particularly did he reverence them for the 
chief article in their creed : the interpretation of every- 
thing terrestrial by what they conceived to be celestial 
standards. That idea which permeates so many of 
their writings, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, say- 
ing" — whatever any particular Victorian Moses 
thought the Lord commanded him to write for the bet- 
terment of humanity, to Tourgee's mind constituted 
their greatest charm. Thus in an article on Reade and 
Trollope he says: "He [Reade] recognized the under- 
lying truth of all artistic production, that its highest 
purpose is to teach a noble lesson." * In another article, 

1 Our Continent, Vol. V, pp. 634-5. 



i.S4 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

entitled "The King is Dead !" he praises Longfellow 
in these words: "He was easily the first of American 
poets." He "won his crown by Americanizing the 
world's life. ... As compared with England's poet 
laureate he was perhaps less rich in fervid imagery, 
but he was of deeper and tenderer tone, of broader and 
riper manhood, closer akin to the great common heart 
and less tainted with any narrow and bigoted exclusive- 
ness." 1 The same article contains much more perf ervid 
praise of Longfellow's Americanism. Tourgee, indeed, 
thought that American literature was destined to sur- 
pass that of the Old World, as is evinced by an article 
called "Americanism in Literature," in which there 
are these passages : "The American element in litera- 
ture is simply the American element in our thought. . . . 
The coming American novelists may choose to portray 
the universal humanity only in Old World phases, but 
they will view such foreign life from a standpoint 
peculiarly their own, and will give new interpretations 
to characters and events which the Old World has but. 
dimly understood and only half appreciated." 2 E. P. 
Roe was the beneficiary of a special amount of lauda- 
tion. "Few men have extended a healthier influence 
upon the life of today than Mr. Roe. In these times, 
when the novel of purpose is made a matter of artistic 
ridicule by our over-refined dilettanti, and the novel 
without a purpose is corrupting the heart and brain of 
the rising generation . . . the very large sales which 

1 Our Continent, Vol. I, p. 178. 
'Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 219. 



f 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 135 

his works have had disclose to us the pleasing fact 
that our American reading public is not yet entirely 
given over to the worship of the realism which insists 
that fiction shall be given up to the painting life as it 
is, dirt and all." x Tourgee further elaborates his 
belief in the purpose novel in these words : "A novel 
without a purpose is the counterpart of a man without 
a purpose. One written for mere amusement may be 
either good or bad, but at the very best, is only the low- 
est form of art." Self-defense was probably the motive 
which prompted the above words. Dickens, George 
Eliot, Ruskin, and other lesser figures often received a, 
word of commendation from Tourgee; in the case of 
George Eliot, he failed to grasp the significance of her 
minute searchings for environmental causes as the 
motivations of good and evil actions. 

Against everything that savored of realism in mod- 
ern fiction, and against all writers who did not tread 
the path of indisputable morality, Tourgee was relent- 
lessly hostile. His novels abound with references to 
these matters. "Black Ice" (pp. 18-19) : "They [mod- 
ern realists] tell us that fiction is of necessity limited by 
its sterile commonplaces to laborious self -dissection 
and elaborated display of the results of morbid mental 
anatomy ... I had come to think that if the life 
which is portrayed in our so-called 'realistic fiction' is 
a fair average product of our institutions, the time 
cannot be far distant when the killing of an American 
will be no* more counted homicide than the drowning 
1 Our Continent, Vol. Ill, p. 669. 



'* 



136 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

of supernumerary puppies/' 1 "Button's Inn" closes 
with this querulous sentence : "We . . . assert that pet- 
tiness alone is truth and declare that real life is con- 
cerned only with multitudinous trivialities, discover- 
able only by elaborate processes of morbid self-dissec- 
tion." "Murvale Eastman" (p.. 113): "So, too, the 
pessimistic philosophy which calls itself 'realism' in 
art and literature, always is, and always will be, at 
fault when it comes to solve the riddle of humanity. 
It says human nature, human character, is a result of 
the operations of natural laws. So it is ; but those laws 
are not all physical, nor purely mental. The soul must 
be taken into account if we would comprehend hu- 
manity or truly portray character." Again in the same 
book (p. 165) : "You see, the 'realist' is always ready 
to believe anything mean; but anything decent and 
manly he declares at once to be unnatural." Also 
(p. 214) : "It is only romantic notions of love and 
virtue that we fear today; and these we seek to fore- 
stall by prescribing for the young soul the carefully 
elaborated daily record of the world's infamies, and 
substituting 'realistic' impurity as a motive for 'healthy 
fiction,' instead of the silly sentimentalism of old- 
fashioned love." "An Outing with the Queen of 
Hearts," (pp. 49-50) : "I suppose we should yet speak 
of it [sex attraction] as love, and go on believing in 
it to the very last, had not 'realism' and the curious 
contempt for all things American, which has come to 
lift us up to the sublime level of social formalism by 
which the society of other lands is shaped into such 
x Our Continent, Vol. Ill, p. 732. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 137 

matchless excellence, taught us that belief in love, and 
more especially in married love, is not merely the very 
'worst possible form/ but a vain and weak credulity 
in which only 'the immature American' is any longer 
willing to admit himself so foolish as to indulge." 
Again (p. 64) : "The man who paints warts and weak- 
ness, sin and shame, may tell the truth; but it is an 
insignificant truth, unworthy of the artist's skill, unless 
it bring some lesson of cause or cure." 

Tourgee's works do not lack specific references to 
some of the chief exponents of these modern ideas, or 
of many other ideas that would not bear the lynx- 
eyed scrutiny of such believers in strictly orthodox 
virtue as himself. In an article which attacks Emer- 
son for his irreverence, there occurs this sentence : "A 
disciple of Carlyle, he regarded man as chiefly created 
that he and his master might scold and scourge him, 
though unlike Carlyle he believed in and expected his 
improvement." 1 Tourgee abominated Carlyle ; he 
praises Auerbach because he was a lover of humanity, 
and hence just the opposite of the "blustering scold," 2 
Carlyle. In "Murvale Eastman" (p. 415) we are told 
that Carlyle is "the cowardliest of braggarts with his 
dog's heart and envenomed tongue" ; while in the same 
book (p. 454) we learn that the chief impression which 
Tourgee obtained from reading the "French Revolu- 
tion" was of "the froth of Carlyle' s rabid ravings." 
Also, Tourgee praises Froude's biography of Carlyle 

1 0ur Continent, Vol. I, p. 242. 
•Ibid., Vol. I, p. 120. 



138 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

because, as he says, it is just that a "man who assumed 
to denounce and scourge others" * ought not to have 
his own shortcomings treated with lenity. Feelings 
of professional jealousy undoubtedly had something to 
do with Tourgee's frequent snubbing of Howells and 
James, though he was occasionally constrained to give 
both some grudging praise. Howells is a "merciless 
satirist of Boston life, who paints its pettiness and self- 
sufficiency so deftly that his victims take his ridicule 
for praise — that universal pessimist" ("Letters to a 
King," p. 71). And while he admits that "no modern 
novelist has more grace and vigor or finer sense of 
literary form" 2 than Howells, Tourgee also speaks of 
him as "pouring forth page after page of inconceivable 
agony over trifles too insignificant for ordinary mortals 
to note. ... A picture is not truthful merely because 
it has dirt in it. The province of true art is to portray 
the meaner phases of nature only as a foil for the 
nobler and grander passions." 3 The last sentence is of 
great significance, for it succinctly states Tourgee's 
abiding conception of the function of literature. The 
chief fault in the works of Howells and James is, ac- 
cording to Tourgee, that the soul has been left out. 4 He 
positively abhorred Hardy. Of his "Two in a Tower" 
he says: "Never was more hideousness conveyed in 
a simple story — . . . The realism of Zola is suffi- 
ciently atrocious, but it is not reductive. . . . — for 

1 Our Continent, Vol. Ill, p. 698-9. 

2 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 733. 
9 Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 252. 
'•Ibid., Vol. I, p. 796. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 139 

cool sensualism, expressed in decorous ingenuousness, 
combined with ignorance of what woman really is, in 
soul, feeling and purpose, commend us to 'Two in a 
Tower'." x As an amusing contrast to these onslaughts 
on three of the greatest novelists of the time, Tourgee's 
effusive admiration for a now almost forgotten lady 
novelist may be cited: "Miss Rhoda Broughton has 
won for herself a peculiar place among modern nove- 
lists. She has had her admirers by the hundred 
thousand, and her critics in equal numbers, but of 
imitators she thus far has had none that are worth 
considering. Her originality of style, indeed, renders 
imitation well nigh impossible." 2 

It was against Russian fiction, however, that 
Tourgee aimed his heaviest verbal artillery. Of 
Turgenev he does indeed admit that his "pen-pictures 
of lower Russian life were the first step toward the 
redemption and elevation of the Russian people" ; 3 
but he is unable to find language scorching enough to 
express his contumely for Tolstoi, particularly because 
of his theories about love. These stabbing words may 
be found in "An Outing with the Queen of Hearts" 
(p. 43): "We are even told that love is no secure 
foundation for happiness in married life, which should, 
instead, be based on 'mutual esteem and forbearance.' 
Indeed, one of the chief priests of this newfangled 
doctrine of life-relations has gone so* far as to declare 
that marriage itself is 'the most sinful form of love,' 

x Our Continent, Vol. Ill, p. 732-3- 
% Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 91. 
'Ibid., Vol IV, p. 411. 



140 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

which itself, so he assures us, is of the devil and al- 
together vile. I thank God that he is not an Amer- 
ican/' And in "Murvale Eastman" (p. 214) we are 
advised that "a generation to whose lips the pessimistic 
foulness of Tolstoi and his imitators has been com- 
mended as an inspiring cordial, not only by the high 
priests of literature, but by ministers of God, is per- 
haps beyond fear of peril from the highly-spiced narra- 
tives of social peccadilloes which abound in the daily 
press." One can scarcely refrain from wondering 
whether the strongest superlatives in our tongue would 
have enabled Tourgee to express even a tithe of his 
disgust could he have read, let us say, "Ann Veronica" ! 

Toward science Tourgee was more charitable than 
toward realistic literature. He looked upon it at best, 
however, as of secondary importance in comparison 
with the value of the emotions, and was frankly sus- 
picious of some of its hypotheses. In "The Apostle of 
Evolution," * he praises Darwin for his love of nature 
and sweet-tempered endurance of adverse criticism, 
but is non-committal in respect to the theory of evolu- 
tion, which he regarded of value chiefly because he 
thought it helped to substantiate his theory of moral 
progress. In "Murvale Eastman" (p. 266) he says: 
"Evolution is the law of attribute, whether it is of 
species or not. . . . The dead hand of an ancestor 
reaches often across even a century and grips us by 
the heartstrings. God has consecrated this law to 
human progress." And again (p. 274) : "Science has 
taught even the most incredulous of saints, within the 

x Our Continent, Vol. I, p. 226. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 141 

life-time of many now living, to admit what was be- 
fore esteemed blasphemous, not merely as a fact, but 
as a beautiful and harmonious revelation; so that we 
read to-day the record of God's work in veritable tables 
of stones which his hand has traced and his wisdom 
preserved for our instruction and delight." But it was 
exceptions from the law of regularity that most ar- 
rested and fascinated his ever-credulous mind. A 
passage from "A Son of Old Harry" (p. 92) will 
substantiate this: "The student of heredity in the 
human family is ever and anon confounded with seem- 
ing miracles In spite of the principle that like 

produces like, we meet every day with instances of 
unlikeness so startling as to confound the observer, 
and, for a time at least, destroy all faith in scientific 
theories of life." Tourgee's belief in the inviolability 
of the exceptional, of the miraculous (in a word, of 
the romantic), was much stronger than his belief in 
the inviolability of the laws of heredity and environ- 
ment. Ironically enough, it so happens that his own 
life is a rather unusually good illustration of the work- 
ings of those same laws. 

Much in Tourgee's novels and in nearly all his other 
work is of interest not so much to the student of 
literature as of politics. His devotion to his particular 
party, as well as his unconcealed disdain for the op- 
posing political faction — a disdain that only too often 
expressed itself in numerous screeds which lacked 
dignity, fairness, impersonality and breadth of view, 
and showed, in their stead, far too much pettiness, 
superficiality, pettifoggery, and feebly sardonic humor 



142 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

— are quite characteristic of the political sound and 
fury of his day. The paper for which he wrote, The 
Chicago Inter-Ocean, was one of the chief sinners of 
the time against public good taste, and not a few of 
Tourgee' s splenetic articles contributed to the sum total 
of its sins — sins which were probably the main cause 
for causing its loss of patronage, and eventual 
absorption by another paper. What it lacked in 
political fairmindedness and foresight, it endeavored 
to atone for by strident animosities and jaundiced 
flapdoodle; qualities which Tourgee, both because of 
his temperament and training, commonly found very 
pleasing to his own conception of partisanship. 

"My poor husband! How his life was embittered, 
ruined, by his trying to do what he had no capacity 
to do!" Thus Mrs. Tourgee laments, as usual with 
acuteness of perception, the chief reason for her hus- 
band's failure to win greater success than was granted 
him. Multiplicity of interests was perhaps the main 
cause why he never attained lasting peace of mind. 
Had he been content to devote himself only to writing, 
his life would have been freed from that continual 
strain of slaving for the necessities of existence which 
he was subjected to during his last twenty years — 
but no, this would not do ; instead, he must, despite the 
pleading admonitions of friends and relatives, invest 
the neat fortune he had won from several of his most 
successful books in a hazardous journalistic experi- 
ment, which resulted in a smash that ruined his 
financial prospects forever. He must capitalize his 
literary talent; and the result was mutually self -de- 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 143 

structive, for both money and mental peace were gone. 
From this time on, he was forced to engage in an un- 
broken struggle to find a market for his various 
literary efforts, in order to keep his family in moder- 
ately good circumstances; and hardly was this goal 
reached by means of his appointment as Consul than 
failing health ensued to cloud the last eight years of 
his life. "I would have been a much better writer 
and far greater novelist had I been content to do less 
pretentious work," Tourgee says in one of his last 
letters; and had he said "less diffuse work," the self- 
criticism would have been still more pertinent. 

"Somehow I have never thought much about fame 
and really do not know that I would care to forego to- 
day's dinner for tomorrow's praise. . . . Yet I be- 
lieve I have the true artistic instinct. The idea of 
carving out a grand presence, a noble character — of 
impressing and at the same time bettering humanity — 
is so strong with me that I find myself absolutely 
absorbed by it." Thus runs a passage from one of 
Tourgee's letters to his daughter, for whom he always 
coveted greater rewards than were ever granted him; 
rewards that, probably impossible of attainment by 
her because of insufficient artistic and literary ability, 
were made forever unattainable by an early death. 
His remark about fame should be largely discounted, 
for he was afflicted with as much of the "last in- 
firmity" as are most literary men; whenever "critic 
peep or cynic bark" touched his works either because 
of their extreme ideas or artistic faults, and pointed 
out how they had few permanent literary qualities, he 



/ 



144 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

was always ready to leap valiantly to their defense. 
While at work on any of his novels, he was almost 
completely absorbed in his task — except when the lure 
of the rod overcame him. "There is no happiness for 
me except in doing — achieving. If I cannot accom- 
plish, I prefer not to be," he says in another letter, 
in which he also significantly states that he cares 
little for music, but likes plays because they pre- 
sent the multitudinous activities of life; a fact, among 
others, which witnesses that his was a nature de- 
ficient, on the whole, in the appreciation of delicately 
refining humanistic values. He had too much love for 
applied ethics to be much interested in strictly eclectic 
mental and emotional pursuits. Not art for art's sake, 
but art for morality's sake, was what spurred his mind 
to activity; and such a conception of the function of 
literature peremptorily excluded finesse from, his writ- 
ings. Serenity, poise, austerity, disinterestedness, cath- 
olicity, — of such enduring literary values he was almost 
destitute ; instead, he exemplified that love for applying 
a quality of virtue by no means always unstrained to 
specific and concrete problems of the day, which, 
despite its frequent abuse of art for didactic uses, is 
one of the perennial glories of English literature. 

This last consideration may well lead to a final 
estimate of Tourgee's place in that literature. Gen- 
erally speaking, his works suffer, as most Victorian 
literature suffers, because of their dual aim — artistic 
excellence plus doctrinal inculcation. More particu- 
larly, he stands out as the author of one purpose novel 
that, principally because of its timeliness, took the 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 145 

country by storm. The burden of that novel he later 
expressed in this passage taken from a poem of his, 
which, like the other comparatively few rhymes that 
he fashioned, has all the vigor of his prose: 

"Yet up from the Southland comes a moan 
Like Yesterday's ceaseless monotone. 
Hark! Tis the half-freed Slave's lament. 
For the bliss we promised and woe we sent! 
The moan of the fettered, untaught soul 
Charged with a freeman's power and dole !" * 

His literary work which preceded "A Fool's 
Errand" never attained popular success, though 
"Toinette" is with little doubt the first piece of fiction 
dealing directly with the problem of Reconstruction; 
for the non-partisan tales of Constance Fenimore 
Woolson which, first published in magazines in the 
seventies and eventually appearing in book form as 
"Rodman the Keeper" in 1880, showed the utter de- 
pression, the yet unquenched bitterness, and the pride, 
still splendid in desolation, of the South, postdated the 
appearance of "Toinette" at least a year. But 
"Toinette," pioneer in a literary land though it is, and 
worthy in many respects of comparison with Tourgee's 
better known writings, never caught the popular fancy 
— perhaps because it was a pioneer. After the extraor- 
dinary success of "A Fool's Errand," Tourgee be- 
gan to experience the misfortune that second or third- 
rate genius must always suffer; he had burnt up al- 
1 Our Continent, Vol. I, p. 329. 



146 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

most all the enthusiasm he had in this first great, 
consuming effort, and spent most of his remaining 
life in a vain attempt to revive the ashes. Or, to 
change the figure, he summarily exhausted his one 
narrow vein of literary ore in "A Fool's Errand" (or, 
more generally, in the six Reconstruction novels) , and 
occupied the rest of his days largely in working and 
re-working the barren material that was still left in 
this vein. Continually failing in this attempt, he was 
at the same time forced to eke out his decreasing in- 
come with efforts to strike a paying vein in some new 
literary mine, which efforts usually proved to be worth- 
less. The first mine was amply large, for it contained 
the endless ramifications of Southern Romance, 
whence, during the eighties, much valuable ore was 
exhumed by several writers of greater ability than 
Tourgee; but unfortunately, in this many-branched 
field, he saw only the single vein of partisan interpreta- 
tion of the Southern mind and character. The read- 
ing public, however, soon tired of his "political docu- 
ments" ; 1 not because they were documents only, for 
they were more than that, but because they were per- 
vasively political, and represented an attitude that both 
unimpassioned, judicial criticism and popular interest 
could not long tolerate. 

Judgment of a writer like Tourgee, as of much 
greater writers (Dickens, for instance) whose faults 
are unusually patent, is always likely to err on the side 
of harshness. There is, to be sure, little possibility 

*"A History of American Literature Since 1870," by Fred 
Lewis Pattee, Century Co., New York, 191 5, p. 318. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 147 

that the uniform edition of his works which he so 
much wanted to see published will ever appear. Public 
concern in the particularly relevant problems of his 
day has since been largely shifted to more immediate 
matters; his point of view was too individual, hence 
too restricted, to cause any notable imitations of the 
works, though he was unquestionably instrumental in 
stimulating much Northern interest in the South. He 
neither followed nor started any very distinct literary 
tradition; rather, he spent his strength in an attempt 
to alleviate a social ill which could not be cured by any 
such ineffectual palliative as the bigotry which results 
from clannish instincts, lack of well-balanced judg- 
ment, myopic political vision, and a sense of personal 
wrongs. Never did the spectator's attitude toward life 
attract him ; he was not interested in the enchantment 
which the flux of things has afforded to some rare and 
precious writers ; he was interested in the things them- 
selves, and in only a restricted portion of them at that. 
To be in the world, yet not of it, was not for him. He 
hated with perfect hatred anything that savored of 
dandyism or of a dilettante attitude toward life, and 
attacked it with unrelenting acerbity. There was no 
neutrality for Tourgee; a belief, a political policy, an 
institution, must be either cold or hot, else it received 
from his pen a doom similar to that which was meted 
out to the church at Laodicea ; and he often doomed it 
anyhow because, even though unneutral, it was too 
cold or too hot. And yet out of such qualities as these 
comes his chief virtue: he exemplified in his writings 
the magnificent, whether credible or not, folk-lore 



148 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

tradition that, in this universe of good and evil, of light 
and darkness, of justice and injustice, of love and hate, 
of God and the Devil, the positive quality of good is 
not only destined to win an eventual victory over the 
negative quality of evil in a future world, but that it 
often wins it here and now. Hence heroism almost in- 
variably sweeps on to 1 triumphant victory in Tourgee's 
novels, while villainy is punished with no less regular 
uniformity, as is demanded by the mores out of which 
come the ideas of popular literature. It was his mis- 
fortune that his particular interpretation of these 
eternally opposed principles did not happen to be 
adequate for the settlement of the questions of Re- 
construction, especially in regard to the black race. 
Settlement of this special matter is still problematic, 
while the general question has now become world- 
wide; and the words concerning Comfort Servosse, 
with which Tourgee concluded the next but last 
chapter of his greatest novel, may now, with but slight 
textual change, be aptly applied to himself : "Time 
smiles grimly as he traces anew the unsolved problem 
which mocked the Fool's heart." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TOURGEE'S PUBLISHED 
WRITINGS, AND PERIODICALS EDITED 
BY HIM 

1867 The Union Register, weekly newspaper. Greens- 

boro, January 3-June 14. 

1868 "The Code of Civil Procedure, to Special Plead- 

ings." Prepared by Victor C. Barringer, 
Will B. Rodman, Albion W. Tourgee, Com- 
missioners of the Code. Raleigh. 
1874 "Toinette: a Novel." New York. [New 
edition, 1875; revised edition, 1879.] 

1878 "The Code of Civil Procedure of North Caro- 

lina with Notes and Decisions." Raleigh. 

1879 "A Digest of Cited Cases in the North Carolina 

Reports." Raleigh. 

"Figs and Thistles. A Western Story." New 
York. [New edition, 1883.] 

"A Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools." New 
York. [Printings: November (2), Decem- 
ber (2); 1880, January, February, March, 
April, May (2), June (2), August (2), 
September, October, November (2), Decem- 
ber (4). New edition with "The Invisible 
Empire," 1880, 1883, 1902.] 
149 



150 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

1880 "The Invisible Empire." New York. 
"Bricks without Straw." New York. [Several 

reprints on unknown dates.] 

1881 "A Royal Gentleman" ["Toinette" renamed] 

and "Zouri's Christmas." New York. [Sec- 
ond edition, 1884.] 

"Aaron's Rod in Politics." N. A. Review, 
February, pp. 139-162. 

"Reform versus Reformation." N. A. Review, 
April, pp. 305-319. 

"The Christian Citizen." The Chautauquan, 
November, pp. 86-91. 

1882 "John Eax and Mamelon, or The South without 

the Shadow." New York. 
Our Continent, weekly magazine, Philadelphia, 
New York, February 15, 1882 -August 20, 
1884. 

1883 "Hot Plowshares." New York. [Our Conti- 

nent, July, 1882-May, 1883.] 

1884 "An Appeal to Csesar." New York. 

1885 "A Man of Destiny." Chicago. {Inter-Ocean, 

December, 1884-March, 1885.] 
"Letters to a Mugwump." Inter-Ocean, Septem- 
ber-November. 

1886 "The Veteran and His Pipe." Chicago. [New 

edition, 1903. Inter-Ocean, April-September.] 
"A Child of Luck." Inter-Ocean, March-No- 
vember. 
"Study in Civilization." N. A. Review, Septem- 
ber, pp. 246-261. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 151 

1887 "Black Ice." New York. 

"Button's Inn." Boston. [New edition, 1897. 
Chautauquan Book Store, 1908.] 

"The Renaissance of Nationalism." N. A. Re- 
view, January, p. 1-11. 

1888 "Eighty Nine." ["89"] New York. 
"Letters to a King." Cincinnati. 

"A Bystander's Notes." Inter-Ocean, May, 
1888 (with occasional lapses) to January, 
1895; August, 1897-September, 1898. 

"The South as a Field for Fiction." Forum, 
December, pp. 404-413. 

1889 New uniform edition of: "Black Ice," "Bricks 

without Straw," "Figs and Thistles," "A 
Fool's Errand," "Hot Plowshares," "John 
Eax," "A Royal Gentleman." New York. 

"With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys." Phila- 
delphia. [Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine, 
December, 1887- August, 1889.] 

"Shall White Minorities Rule?" Forum, April 

pp. 143-155. 

1890 "Pactolus Prime." New York. 

"Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist." New 
York. [New edition, 1892. The Advance, 
Chicago, vol. XXXII. ] 

"The Right to Vote." Forum, March, pp. 78-92. 

1891 "John Workman's Notions." Inter-Ocean, July- 

May, 1892. 

1892 "A Son of Old Harry." New York. 



152 ALBION W. TOURGEE 

1893 "Out of the Sunset Sea." New York. 

"The Anti-Trust Campaign." N. A. Review, 
July, pp. 30-40. 

1894 "An Outing with the Queen of Hearts." New 

York. [Cosmopolitan, November, 1891, pp. 
70-84.] 
"A Man of Destiny." [Second series.] Inter- 
Ocean, January-April. 

1895 The Basis. Weekly, March-December; monthly, 

December-April, 1896. Buffalo. 

1896 "The Story of a Thousand." Buffalo. [Cos- 

mopolitan (in part), November, 1894- April, 
1895; completed in The Basis.] 

"The War of the Standards." New York. 

"The Mortgage on the Hip-Roof House." 
Cincinnati. 

"The Reversal of Malthus." Am. Jr. of 
Sociology, July, pp. 13-24. 

"An Astral Partner." The Green Bag, July- 
August. 

"Some Advice to Young Voters." The Golden 
Rule, October 1, pp. 4-5. 

1898 "The Man Who Outlived Himself." New 

York. 

1899 "A Quiet Corner in Europe." Independent, 

June 1, pp. 1483-1485. 
"The Twentieth Century Peace-Makers." Con- 
temp. Review, London, June, pp. 886-908. 
1901 "The Summerdale Brabble." The National 
Tribune, Washington, March-April. 



ALBION W. TOURGEE 153 

1902 "Our Consular System." Independent, January 
23, pp. 208-210. 

Two foreign translations of "A Fool's Errand" have 
been found: "Eines Narren Narrenstreich," by E. 
Pennet, Berlin, 1882, 3 vols.; "Hullum Hritys," by 
Waldemar Churberg, Helsingissa, 1883, 2 vols. 



INDEX 



Abbott, General Joseph, 69 

Alger, Horatio, 122 

Anderson, President M. B., 20, 23, 63 

"Ann Veronica," 140 

"Appeal to Caesar, An," 78, 94-6, 11 1 

Arena, 70 

Arnold, Benedict, 12 

Auerbach, Berthold, 137 

Bacon, Lord, 16 

Basis, The, 120-1 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 109 

Bennett, James Gordon, 89 

"Black Ice," 101-4, 105, 1 10, 135 

Blaine, James G., 85, 98 

Bookman, 69 

"Bricks without Straw," 61, 73-76, 95 

Broughton, Rhoda, 139 

Brown, John, 88 

Buffalo Express, The, 62, 128-9 

"Button's Inn," 104-6, 136 

Byron, Lord, 17 

"C" letters, 57-8, 97 

Carlyle, Thomas, 27, 137-8 

Cervantes, 27 

Chace, Dr. Wm., 102 

Chautauquan, The, 26 

"Child of Luck, A," 100-1 

Choate, Joseph H., 81 

Cicero, 22 

Cleveland, Grover, 96-9, 100-1, 107, 119 

"Code of Civil Procedure, The," 57 

"Comedie Humaine," 23 

Conkling, Roscoe, 98 

"Correspondence of Jonathan Worth, The," 39 

155 



156 INDEX 

Darwin, Charles, 140 
D'Aubigne, 16 
Davis, Jefferson, 38 
Davis, Robert, 84, 88 
Denver Times, The, 73 
Dial, 75 

Dickens, Charles, 135, 146 
"Digest of Cited Cases, A," 57 
Diogenes, 101 

"Eighty-Nine," 106-8 
Eliot, George, 135 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 137 
Erie Dispatch, The, 31 

"Figs and Thistles," 59, 61, 71-2, 74 

"Fool's Errand, A," 59-70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 95, 145, 

146, 148 
Froude, James A., 137 

Garfield, James A., 72, 76-8, 95 

Grant, Ulysses S., 52, 68, 81, 90, 98, 99 

Hardy, Thomas, 116, 138-9 

Harper's Magazine, 68 

Henry, O., 52 

Heywood, Chester W., 17 

"History of American Literature, A," 146 

"History of the United States," 33 

Holden, Governor, 45 

"Hot Plowshares," 61, 86-8 

Howells, William Dean, 138 

Hugo, Victor, 68 

Hunt, Leigh, 56 

Inter-Ocean, The Chicago, 27, 77, 97, 99, 100, 108, 109, no, 115, 

116, 119, 125, 142 
"Invisible Empire, The," 70-1 

James, Henry, 138 

Jay, John, 81 

"John Eax," 54-5, 61, 88 

"John Workman's Notions," 115 

Johnson, Andrew, 35, 38 

'Kilbourne, Harmon, 18 
Kilbourne, Mary Corwin, 18 



INDEX 157 

Kingsley, Charles, 113 

Kirk, Edmund, 69 

Ku Klux Klan, 43-5, 57, 63, 64, 70, 75, 79, 107 

Kuhn, Seneca, 34-5 

"Letters of Junius," 58 
"Letters to a King," 108, 138 
"Letters to a Mugwump," 99-100 
Lincoln, Abraham, 50, 88, 99 
Lincoln, Robert, 85 
Lip pine ott's Monthly Magazine, no. 
Logan, John A., 109 
Longfellow, Henry W., 134 

Macaulay, Thomas B., 16 

Mackaye, Steele, 78-9 

McKinley, William, 122-3 

"Mamelon," 54, 55-6 

"Man of Destiny, A," 97-8, 101, 119 

"Man Who Outlived Himself, The," 124-5 

Mayville Sentinel, 82 

Mendenhall, C. P., 32 

Mitchell, Donald G., 85 

Morgan, General J. H., 25 

"Mortgage on the Hip-Roof House, The," 122 

"Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist," 113-4, 120, 136, 137, 140 

Nation, 96 

National Tribune, 127 

New York Tribune, 38, 59, 60, 67, 68, 69, 80 

"Night Thoughts," 16 

Nixon, William Penn, 97, 99, 116 

North State, The, 57 

"O. Henry Biography," 52, 70 

Our Continent, 62, 84-91, 95, 100, 104, 108, 121, 133, 134, 135, 

137, 138, 139, 140, 145 
"Out of the Sunset Sea," 117-8, 119 
"Outing with the Queen of Hearts, An," 118-9,136-7, 139 

"Pactolus Prime," n 1-2 
"Paradise Lost," 16 
Pettingill, R. L., 34 
"Pilgrim's Progress," 16 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 125 



158 INDEX 

Raleigh Observer, The, 68 

Reade, Charles, 133 

"Reconstruction in North Carolina," 33, 40 

"Reconstruction Political and Social," 33, 35, 65 

Richardson, Samuel, 63 

Robbins, Rebecka, 12 

"Robinson Crusoe," 46 

Roe, Edward P., 112, 134 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 126, 128 

"Royal Gentleman, A," 48, 61, 74 

Royal, Wm. L., 79-81 

Ruskin, John, 115, 135 

"Scottish Chiefs," 16 

Shakspere, William, 19 

Snow, Rowena, 13, 14 

"Son of Old Harry, A," 116-7, 141 

"Story of a Thousand," 25, 28, 29, 130 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 85 

"Summerdale Brabble, The," 127-8 

"Toinette," 41, 48-51, 145 

Tolstoi, Count Leo, 139-40 

Tourgee, Aimee, 44, 118, 121, 124, 130, 143 

Tourgee, Albion Winegar, ancestors, 12; father and mother, 
12-3; their marriage and removal to Ohio, 13; birth, 13; 
mother's death, 13; stepmother, 13-4; trip to Massachu- 
setts, 14 ; youthful diversions, 14-5 ; reading, 15-6 ; return 
to Ohio, 16; academy life, 16-7; early writings, 17; meets 
future wife, 17-8; college life, 19-21; enlists in army, 21; 
severely wounded, 21; slow recovery, 22; first book pub- 
lished, 22-4 ; second enlistment, 25 ; first interest in negro, 
25-6; prisoner of war, 26-7; marriage, 27; return to war, 
28; army diary, 28; "The Story of a Thousand," 28-9; in- 
dependence of character, leading to withdrawal from army, 
29-30; admitted to bar, 31; removes to Greensboro, 32; at- 
titude toward South, 33-4; business^ partnerships, 34; fail- 
ure of nursery, 35 ; imprudent actions, 35-6 ; The Union 
Register, 36-8; hatred of Governor Worth, 39; elected 
judge, 40; plays important part in Constitutional Conven- 
tion, 40-1 ; more imprudence, 41-2 ; experiences with Ku 
Klux Klan, 43-5 ; failure of another business enterprise, 
45-47; fragmentary literary labors, 47; first novel, 
"Toinette," 48-51; duties as judge, 51; removes to Raleigh, 
52; "John Eax" and "Mamelon," 53-6; lectures, 56; writ- 
ings on legal matters, 56-7; "C" letters, 57-8; leaves South 



INDEX 159 

and goes to New York, 58; "A Fool's Errand," 59-70; how 
written, 60-1; one of series of works, 61-2; story told in 
"A Fool's Errand," 62-4; its message, 64-7; its immediate 
popularity, 67-9; later critical opinions, 69-70; "The Invis- 
ible Empire," 70-1 ; "Figs and Thistles," 71-2 ; settles in 
Denver, 72-3; returns to New York, 73; "Bricks without 
Straw," 73-6; campaigns for Garfield, 76-7; Garfield seeks 
his advice, 77-8; dramatises "A Fool's Errand," 78-9; "A 
Fool's Errand" attacked, 79-81 ; public dinner for him, 81 ; 
purchases Thorheim, 81-2; makes home there, 82-3; goes 
to Philadelphia, 84; Our Continent, 84-91; "Hot Plow- 
shares" published in Our Continent, 86-8; troubles as ed- 
itor and publisher, 88-9; magazine fails, 89-91; life at 
Thorheim, 02-123; waning literary powers, 92; character 
as shown in wife's diary, 92-4; "An Appeal to Caesar," 
94-6; attacks on Cleveland, 97-9; "A Man of Destiny," 97-8; 
"The Veteran and His Pipe," 99; "Letters to a Mugwump/' 
99-100; "A Child of Luck," 100-1 ; "Black Ice," 101-4; "But- 
ton's Inn," 104-6; activities as inventor, 106; "Eighty-Nine," 
106-8; "Letters to a King," 108; material contributed to 
Inter-Ocean, 108-10; "With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys," 
no; advocates educational measure, no-i; "Pactolus 
Prime," n 1-2; "Murvale Eastman," 113-4; lectures at Buf- 
falo Law School, 114-5; "John Workman's Notions," 115; 
denounced for prophecy of negro insurrection, 116; "A Son 
of Old Harry," 116-7; "Out of the Sunset Sea," 117-8; "An 
Outing with the Queen of Hearts," 118-9; various troubles, 
119-20; The Basis, 120- 1 ; "The War of the Standards," 
121-2; "The Mortgage on the Hip-Roof House," 122; des- 
perate financial situation, 122; appointed consul, 122-3; 
goes to Bordeaux, 124; "The Man Who Outlived Himself," 
124-5; trouble with French bailiff, 125-6; failing health, 
126; abandons his educational theory for solving problem 
of Reconstruction, 126-7; "The Summerdale Brabble," 127-8; 
threatened with removal to Halifax, 128-9; final illness, 129- 
30; death, 130; personal appearance, 130-1; critical esti- 
mate of his character and writings, 132-48; limited liter- 
ary ability, 132-3; views on contemporaries, 133-40; typical 
Victorian, 133-5; hatred of realistic fiction, 135-40; despises 
Carlyle, 137-8; jealous of Howells and James, 138; abhor- 
rence of Hardy and Tolstoi, 138-40; attitude toward sci- 
ence, 140-1; narrow point of view, 141-2; too many inter- 
ests, 142-3; attitude toward work, 143-4; his place in lit- 
erature, 144-8 

Tourgee, Cyrus, 13 

Tourgee, Mrs. Emma Kilbourne, 18, 22, 27, 28, 60, 61, 63, 73, 
82, 88,89, 90, 92-4, 101-2, in, 113, 118, 119, 122, 123, 128, 129, 130 



160 INDEX 

Tourgee, Peter, 12 

Tourgee, Valentine, 12 

Tourgee, Valentine Jr., 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 24, 87 

,Trollope, Anthony, 133 

Turgenev, Ivan, 139 

Union Register, The, 36-8 

"Veteran and His Pipe, The," 99 

"War of the Standards, The," 121-2 

Warner, Joseph, 78 

Warner, Mrs. Joseph, 78 

Washington, Booker T., 126 

Winegar, Jack, 13 

Winegar, Jacob, 12 

Winegar, Jacob Jr., 13, 14 

Winegar, Louisa Emma, 12, 13 

Winegar, Ulric, 12 

"With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys," no 

Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 145 

Worth, Governor Jonathan, 39, 42 

Zola, Emile, 138 



VITA 

The author was born at Portland, New York, on 
March 12, 1887. He graduated from the high school 
in Westfield, New York, in 1906, and received the de- 
gree of Bachelor of Arts from Clark College in 19 12. 
From 1912 to 1914 he was teacher of English in the 
Sanford School, Redding Ridge, Connecticut. He be- 
came a graduate student in English at Columbia Uni- 
versity in 1 9 14, and was University Fellow in English 
during 191 5-1 91 6. In June, 19 16, he was made In- 
structor in English in Columbia University, which posi- 
tion he holds at the present time. 



161 



. TRRARY OF CONGRESS 

mi 



